SeeingBeauty
SeeingBeauty
BAKER SCHORR FINE ART MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY
“What is art but a way of seeing?”
—Thomas Berger
One of the goals of Baker Schorr Fine Art is to be a place where one can see and experience beauty. Art has many aspects and powers. It is relational. It is evocative. It is beautiful. Art can engage, impassion, communicate and challenge. It can push and pull, comfort and disquiet. At its most basic level, art visualizes emotion and creates a response in the viewer. Our understanding of beauty is dependent on our willingness to see.
This kind of interaction with art is life-changing and I witness it over and over in gallery guests, friends, and collectors who are making art prominent in their lives, homes and businesses.
Throughout history, the evolution of art has been marked by openness and vision. With each developing style and period, art challenges norms. Think Impressionism as a departure from realistic academic painting; Modern art in its various forms, radically shifting in form and style; Abstract Expressionism emphasizing emotion and color over representation.
painters. Our collection also includes Contemporary art, both twentieth century works and works by current practicing artists.
Baker Schorr offers fine art consultation for individuals, collectors and designers in residential and corporate settings. In addition to exhibitions throughout the year, our program includes receptions, artist lectures, gallery talks, and other special events.
As I told my art students for more than 25 years, making and appreciating art is about learning to see. I hope Baker Schorr Fine Art is a place where together we can expand our understanding of beauty, be challenged to think deeply, and most of all develop keen sight. In a culture divided against itself, art can help us make sense of our humanity. It can reveal the eternal, and brighten our homes and days. I agree with artist Charles Hawthorne Webster when he said,
“Anything under the sun is beautiful if you have vision. It is the seeing of the thing that makes it so.”
BSFA celebrates this evolution with our broad inventory featuring nineteenth and twentieth century American and European paintings, and twentieth century Modern art, with a focus on Post-War American abstract
Kathryn Schorr
Baker Schorr Fine Art, Midland, Texas
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Will Barnet
American, 1911–2012
Final Study For “Atalanta”
1975
Watercolor, color pencils and pencil on vellum
47 x 36 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Harmon-Meek Gallery, Naples, Florida, with the label; The Estate of the Artist.
Gotthard Kuehl is regarded as one of the most important early impressionists in Germany. He was born in Lübeck, the son of Simon Kuehl, the sexton and organist at St. Lorenz Church. From 1867 Kuehl studied for three years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden and later at the academy in Munich under Wilhelm von Diez.
Kuehl first came into contact with French Impressionism when he participated in the world exhibition in Vienna in 1873. In 1878, he moved to Paris. His artistic work was influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage and the painter Édouard Manet. Study trips to Holland brought him close to the art of the Old Masters as he studied Jan Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. Kuehl also maintained contact with other paintercolleagues such as Max Liebermann and Jozef Israëls. The foremost painter of the German School of Impressionism, Liebermann was a co-founder of “Die Gruppe XI”, and in 1898 of the “Berlin Secession”, a group which provided a forum for German artists who wanted to be free of traditional academic confines.
Beginning in 1893 Kuehl lived in Dresden, where he was named a Professor at the Academy and established a new realism at the Academy, which had previously been dominated by late-romanticism. Kuehl’s paintings of interiors became increasingly free and impressionistic in terms of light and style. This style was especially expressed in his of depictions of baroque churches. In 1915 he died in Dresden. His works may be found in the Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden, The Behnhaus in Lübeck, Kunsthalle Hamburg, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig.
Gotthardt Johann Kuehl
German, 1850-1915
Interior of Saint Catherine’s Church
Oil on panel
39 1/4 x 23 inches
Framed: 52 1/4 x 35 3/4 inches
Signed and inscribed lower left
Provenance: Gustave Poser, Dresden; Private Collection, Dresden, 1956
Lucien Adrion
French, 1889-1953
Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris
Oil on canvas
26 x 32 inches
Signed lower right
Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin
French, 1841-1927
Le Barrage de Genetinor - Gords de Vreuse Gelee Blanche
c. 1910
Oil on canvas
23 1/2 x 28 3/4 inches
Framed: 33 1/2 x 38 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Private Collection, France, until 2021; Ader Auction, Paris, 19 November 2021
Modern
The Modern Art movement emerged in 1872 with the emphasis on color, light and blurred brushstrokes of Impressionism. French painters like Monet, Degas and Renoir were at the forefront of this new era when artists were reinterpreting and challenging the rules of realistic academic painting.
The Modern art genre included several major movements including Post-impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and by the middle of the twentieth century, Abstract Expressionism. Abstract expressionists abandoned figurative styles in favor of an emphasis on color, form, composition, emotion, and the creative process.
Wolf Kahn
German-American, 1927-2020
Dissonant Harmony 1985
Oil on canvas
45 1/4 x 67 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York; Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1990
Georges Lemmen
Belgian, 1865-1916
L’Eglise Sainte-Marie a Schaerbeek
1908
Oil on board laid down on panel 21 5/8 x 26 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Provenance: Galerie Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London; Private Collection, Germany; Sotheby’s, October, 2023
Wolf Kahn
German-American, 1927-2020
Meadows at Hopewell 1973
Oil on canvas
42 x 66 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Meredith Long & Company, Houston, Texas (label verso)
Recognized by critics as one of Philadelphia’s foremost painters and teachers, Jane Piper enjoyed a career that spanned fifty years and included thirty-five solo shows. Known for her abstract still lifes, she has been described as an ‘instinctive individualist’ whose independent spirit characterized her art, education and approach to teaching.
Jane Piper
American, 1916-1991
Flowers by a Dark Window 1984-87
Oil on Canvas
42 x 48 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Provenance:
The Estate of the Artist
Building on the French modernist tradition of Matisse and Cezanne, Piper gave color precedence over representation. She was interested in spatial organization and in creating space through color. By 1952, her work was growing increasingly abstract, and she began using white as the dominant color of her palette. Piper liked “the spatial sense of brilliance” it brought to her other colors.
Piper studied with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown and with Arthur Carles at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts. She taught painting and drawing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the mid 1950s and the Philadelphia College of Art from 1956-1985. Her works are in numerous collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the National Academy of Design.
Jane Piper
American, 1916-1991
Composition III
1957-59
Oil on canvas
46 x 34 inche
Framed: 52 x 40 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: The Estate of the Artist; 1st Philadelphia Art Festival at Philadelphia Museum of Art; Woodmere Museum
Milton Avery
American, 1885-1965
Lavender Sea 1948
Watercolor and gouache on paper 22 x 30 inches
Framed: 32 x 40 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Provenance: Marianne Friedland Gallery, Toronto, Canada (label verso)
Paul Jenkins
American, 1923-2012
Phenomena High Watermark 1979
Acrylic on canvas 51 x 38 inches
Signed lower left
Provenance: Allen Rubiner Gallery, Royal Oak, Michigan; Private Collection
Virginia Berresford
American, 1904-1995
South End of Martha’s Vineyard 1933
Oil on canvas
29 x 36 inches
Signed lower right
March Avery
American, b. 1932
Lilies By The Lake 1983
Oil on canvas
40 x 50 inches
Signed and dated bottom right
Provenance: Makler Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Private Corporate Collection, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
American, 1857–1940
Japanese Still Life Oil on canvas
32 x 30 inches
Framed: 40 3/4 x 38 3/4 inches
Signed lower right
Aleading figure in New York’s turn-of-the-century art establishment, Harry Watrous had a successful career as a painter and administrator.
After training at the Academie Julian in Paris, Watrous returned to New York and won recognition for his stylized female portraits, elegant still lifes, and enchanting evening landscapes. His work earned gold medals from the St. Louis Exposition of 1904 and the National Academy of Design. Watrous went on to serve as the President of the National Academy, where he helped to set the artistic currents of the time. His work may be seen in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Portland Museum of Art.
Harry Wilson Watrous
John Stephan
American, 1906-1995
Untitled 1962
Oil on canvas
72 x 72 inches
Estate label and estate stamp verso, signed verso and lower left
Provenance: The Estate of the Artist
Esteban Vicente
Spanish-American, 1903-2001
Inside Red 1986
Oil on canvas
56 x 68 inches
Framed: 57 x 69 inches
Signed, titled and dated verso
Provenance: Private Collection, Tempe, Arizona; Acquired in 1986 from Riva Yares Gallery
Esteban Vicente began his life and career in Spain. His first solo show was in 1928 at the Ateneo de Madrid. He continued to show actively in Spain before moving to the United States in 1936 where he fell in with the likes of Pollock, Rothko, Franz Klein, Barnett Newman, and Willem de Kooning. He had his first solo show in the United States in 1937 at the Kleeman Gallery, and subsequently participated in a myriad of other exhibitions, including the infamous artist-organized Ninth Street Show, and all of the Stable Gallery Annuals. In addition to painting, Vicente taught for the majority of his career, serving on the faculty at numerous institutions across the US, including Yale, Princeton, and the University of California, Berkeley.
Though he began as a representational painter, Vicente abandoned this style to explore abstraction, which made up most of his body of work. His works are poetic, thoughtful, and gentle, very in tune with a Rothko sensibility. Vicente’s paintings and drawings are meticulously crafted, yet lyrical in their simplicity.
In 1991 Vicente received a Gold Medal for Fine Arts from King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia of Spain. At the end of his life, a museum was opened in his honor-the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Esteban Vicente. Vicente was present for its opening in Segovia by the Spanish government in 1998. A street was named after him near his birthplace in Turegano.
George Vranesh
American, 1926-2014
Scuffle c. 1957
Oil on canvas
34 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches
Signed verso
Provenance: The Estate of the Artist
Gerald Coarding
American, 1911-1986
Untitled c. 1945
Oil on Canvas
35 x 55 1/2 inches
Framed: 45 1/2 x 67 inches
Double sided (verso is 1954), signed verso
Provenance: Private Collection, Connecticut
Paul Brach
American, 1924-2007
Merlin 1959 Oil on canvas
62 x 52 1/2 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Provenance: Property from the Estate of Marcia W. Seely
Carl Holty
American, 1900-1973
Untitled Oil on board
35 1/2 x 41 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Collection of Bob Brue, Private Collection
Ray Parker
American, 1922-1990
#6, 1955
Oil on canvas
62 x 50 1/2 inches
Framed: 64 x 53 inches
Signed and dated lower left
Provenance: Paul Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles, California; Estate of Carol A. Straus, Houston, Texas
Ray Parker, a New York School Abstract Expressionist, was a colorist influenced by Cubism in his early work. He later sought to improvise in paint just as he improvised as a jazz musician, and by the early 1950s, he became associated with the Abstract Expressionists. Parker simplified his painting composition and used abstraction and color to express emotion. He was an admirer of Henri Matisse whose work inspired his use of color and form. Parker is best known for his “Simple Paintings” from the late 50s to early 60s where cloud-like forms of color are set against a white background.
Born in South Dakota in 1922, Parker received a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1948 from the University of Iowa. Before moving to New York in 1955, he taught in Iowa, Minnesota and Tennessee. He later was a guest critic at Columbia University and Bennington College, and taught at Hunter College in New York in the late 1950s. Parker was represented by the Samuel Kootz Gallery, one of the leading galleries at that time who represented, among others, Picasso and Hofmann.
Ray Parker’s work is in the collections of the Los Angeles Museum of Art; Tate Gallery, London; Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
George Oberteuffer
American, 1878-1940
Paysage de Printemps
1910 Oil on canvas
25 3/4 x 32 inches
Framed: 32 3/8 x 39 inches
Signed ‘Oberteuffer 1910’ , lower right
Provenance: Private collection, Connecticut
French-Romanian, 1915-1997
Yellow and Green Composition
c. 1950s
Mixed media on paper
17 x 12 inches
Framed: 27 1/4 x 23 inches
Signed: N. Dumitresco (l.l.) lower left
Provenance: Private Collection of Mrs.Howard Wise, Cleveland, Ohio
Natalia Dumitresco
Édouard Vuillard
French, 1868-1940
Madame Hessel à la Campagne à Amfreville c. 1907
Pastel and charcoal on gray paper
44 1/2 x 40 1/2 inches
Framed: 56 x 52 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Prince Antoine Bibesco Collection, Paris (circa 1948); Dr. Jules C. Stein Collection, Los Angeles, California; Doris Babette Jones Oppenheimer Stein Collection, Los Angeles, California (bydescent from the above, 1981);
Gerald H.Oppenheimer Collection, Beverly Hills, California (by descent from the above, 1984); Gail Feingarten
Oppenheimer Collection, Beverly Hills, California (by descent from the above, 2021); Thence by descent to the present
The work in situ in the Oppenheimer home.
Édouard Vuillard is considered one of the revolutionaries of the Nabis movement that paved the way for abstraction. His long career spanned the late 19th and nearly half of the 20th century. Vuillard’s luminous work became increasingly abstract and colorful, which some art historians link to Henri Matisse and the Fauves.
In it’s original frame, this oversized pastel comes from the collection of Prince Antoine Bibesco and later from the famed Oppenheimer collections. Pictured on the back lawn of Chateau-Rouge in Amfréville is the artist’s dear friend, companion and lover, Madame Lucy Hessel, who also happened to be the wife of his art dealer Jos Hessel.
Vuillard is included in numerous museum collections: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musee d’Orsay, Paris; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena; Art Institute of Chicago; Hermitage, St. Petersburg; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Tate Gallery, London; and numerous others.
French, 1934-2009
Untitled, #499
1987
Oil on Canvas
38 x 52 inches
Provenance: The Estate of the Artist
Francois Aubrun
Laura Coombs Hills
American, 1859-1952
White Camellia
1952
Pastel
14 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches
Signed upper left
Provenance: Private Maryland and Massachusetts Estate Collection
“Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Laura Coombs Hills
American, 1859-1952
Tulips in a Glass Vase
Pastel on Paperboard
21 x 18 inches
Framed: 28 x 25 inches
Signed upper left
Provenance: David Findlay Jr. Inc., New York City, New York
Carl Holty
American, 1900-1973
Red Gold 1958
Oil on canvas
56 x 42 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Graham Gallery, NYC (label verso); Artist Roy Dedders. Martin Diamond, New Rochelle, New York
Exhibited: 1958 solo show at Graham. Framed poster announcing that exhibition included in this sale
Susan Hertel
American, 1930-1993
Untitled (Dogs Eating)
c. 1980s
Oil and charcoal on canvas
46 x 63 inches
Framed: 50 x 67 inches
Provenance: Barbara Beretich, Claremont, California; Acquired by bequest from the above to the present owner
William Slaughter
American, 1923-2003
Texas Bluebonnets
Late 20th century
Oil on canvas
24 x 36 inches
Signed lower right
Susan Hertel
American, 1930-1993
Old Corral 1
c. 1970s
Oil on canvas
52 x 75 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Elaine Horwitch Galleries
(label verso)
William Matthews
American, b. 1949
Cowboy Preparing His Saddle
Watercolor on Paper
24 1/2 x 44 3/4 inches
Signed upper left
Provenance:
Property of a Weston, Connecticut Estate
American, 1884-1970
View From My Room, Spain
51 x 35 inches
Framed: 59 x 42 1/4inches
Signed WP 25 lower left
Provenance: The artist, then by descent to the artist’s grandson; Greenwich Gallery, Connecticut until 2001; Private Collection, Greenwich, Connecticut
Waldo Peirce
1925 Oil on canvas
Georges Noel
French, 1924-2010
Untitled 1966
Mixed media on canvas
50 x 45 inches
Framed: 52 1/2 x 46 1/2 inches
Signed and dated verso
Provenance: Acquired directly from the Artist
William Samuel Horton
American, 1865-1936
Champ de Choux
1936
Oil on Canvas
21 5/8 x 29 inches
Provenance: Galerie Charpentier, Paris; Acquired from the above by Distinguished Belgian Collection; Sotheby’s October, 2023
Joseph B. O’Sickey
American, 1918-2013
51 x 61 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Private collection, New York, New York
Exhibited: Jacques Selgman & Co, New York, New York, label verso
Red Cloth Oil on Canvas
March Avery
American, b. 1932
Farm Friends
2008
Oil on canvas
40 x 60 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Provenance: Yares Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Sally Michel Avery
American, 1902-2003
Cat Sitter
1992
Oil on canvas board
12 x 9 inches
Framed: 22 x 18 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Provenance: Private Collection, New York, New York
Earl Biss was a major contributor to the explosion of Southwestern Art in the last half of the 20th Century, and particularly to the rise of contemporary Native American Art. His portraits of Plains Indian horsemen, his use of the medium of oil painting, and above all the exuberance of his brushwork brought him attention.
Biss was a Crow Indian who, as a boy, spent summers on the reservation in Montana and, as an adult, returned frequently to live and work there. He absorbed tribal legends and history from the elders, roamed the sweeping mountain landscape, and found inspiration for his finest works. His paintings have a dreamlike quality, his Indian figures often merging with the landscape.
He was a central figure in the miracle generation of students at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe during the late sixties. Together, these talented young artists changed the face of Indian Art and Southwestern Art, injecting vivid color and a modernistic sensibility into what had been a sedate genre of linear realism. Biss was known as the catalyst for this remarkable group.
Earl Biss
Native American, 1947-1998
Untitled Oil on canvas
21 1/2 x 66 inches
Provenance: Private Collection, Providence, Rhode Island
American, 1902-1971
And So The Light Sails On c. 1950s
Oil on canvas
40 x 50 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Lillian Heidenberg Fine Art, New York (label verso)
Irene Rice-Pereira
Born in Boston in 1902, Irene Rice Pereira moved to Brooklyn, New York, with her family during her childhood. At age twenty-five, she began taking night classes at the Art Students League where she was exposed to the European avantgarde and was encouraged to experiment with Cubist abstraction.
In 1931, Pereira left New York for Paris to study at the Académie Moderne before traveling throughout Europe. Returning to New York in 1933, Pereira received her first solo exhibition at the American Contemporary Art Gallery and went on to become a member of the fine arts faculty at the Works Progress Administration Design Laboratory. As a teacher, she championed the interdisciplinary study of art and science, modeling her program after László Moholy-Nagy’s machine and technologyoriented curriculum.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Pereira became a central figure among New York–based abstract artists. From 1940 to 1942, she worked at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (now Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum). In addition to her work as an educator and lecturer, Pereira was honored with shows at major museums including the groundbreaking Exhibition by 31 Women (1943) at Peggy Guggenheim’s museumgallery, Art of This Century; in a two-person retrospective with Loren MacIver (1953) at the Whitney Museum of American Art; and in a one-person retrospective (1954) at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
American, 1902-1971
Sphering the Turn
c. 1950-60
Oil on canvas
46 x 30 inches
Signed lower right
Irene Rice-Pereira
Alice Forman
American, b. 1931
Still Life in White on Green
Oil and sand on canvas
28 x 36 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: New Art Center Gallery, New York, New York
Private Collection, New York, New York
Xavier Gonzalez
Mexican-American, 1898-1993
New York East By My Window
1965
Oil on canvas
44 x 56 inches
Initialed lower right, signed verso
Provenance: The Artist, 222 Central Park South, New York, New York, (label verso)
American, b. 1953
Calla #2, Conway, New Hampshire
1972
Archival pigment print 23 3/4 x 33 3/4 inches
Signed in pencil on verso/Printed later, photographers copyright stamp verso
Vincent Vallarino
Vincent Vallarino
American, b. 1953
Civitia di Bagnoregio, Italy
1969
Archival pigment print
26 3/4 x 33 3/4 inches
Signed in pencil on verso/Printed later, photographers copyright stamp verso
Edward Sheriff Curtis
American, 1868-1952
The Potter (Nampeyo)—Hopi
1906 / printed c. 1930
Toned gelatin silver print 22 x 16 1/2 inches
Framed: 34 3/4 x 29 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Edward S.
Curtis Archive
Collection of Susan and G. Ray Hawkins, Beverly Hills
Literature: Edward S. Curtis: The North American Indian, The Complete Portfolios, Curtis, pg. 486 Edward
Curtis: One Hundred
Masterworks, Cardozo, pg. 21, fig. 14 and pg. 132, pl. 81
Edward Sheriff
Curtis
American, 1868-1952
The Maid of Dreams
1909 / printed c. 1930
Toned gelatin silver print
22 x 16 1/2 inches
Framed: 34 3/4 x 29 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Edward S. Curtis Archive
Collection of Susan and G. Ray Hawkins, Beverly Hills
Literature: The Flute of the Gods, Ryan, pg. 130
Paul Kallos
Hungarian, 1928-2001
Abstraction
1955
Oil on Canvas 28 x 45 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Provenance: Collection of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Washington University, St. Louis
Jack Roth
American, 1927-2004
Dance to the Music of Spring, Montclair #61
1981
Acrylic on canvas
52 x 70 inches
Provenance: The Estate of the Artist
Abstract Expressionism
describes a movement in American painting that flourished in New York City after World War II, also known as the New York School. These artists used abstraction, often on largescale canvases, to convey emotional content. Emphasizing the physical interaction of artist, paint and canvas, abstract expressionists conveyed meaning through the color, texture and application of the paint itself. Given the cultural climate of the time, the movement centered on unfettered artistic freedom and had resonance in many mediums including drawing and sculpture.
Within Abstract Expressionism were two broad groupings—Action painters, led by artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, who attacked their canvases with expressive gestural marks and brush strokes; and Color Field painters like Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still, whose work was characterized by large areas of flat color, sometimes evoking a meditative response from the viewer.
John Little
American, 1907-1984
Color Zones
1982
Oil on canvas
60 1/4 x 50 1/4 inches
Signed lower left
Provenance: The Estate of the Artist
“Develop your senses—especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
—Leonardo da Vinci
American, 1914-2003
Stain Yellow Green (VSF 586)
on canvas
52 x 62 inches
Estate stamped verso
Provenance: The Estate of the Artist
Vivian Springford
Acrylic
Vivian Springford
American, 1914-2003
Untitled (VSF 838) 1984
Watercolor on Paper 22 x 30 inches
Framed: 31 x 38 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: The Estate of the Artist
Vivian Springford
American, 1914-2003
Red, White Blue
Acrylic on canvas
46 x 66 inches
Signed verso
Provenance:
The Estate of the Artist
American, 1927-2004
62 1/2 x 56 1/2 inches
Provenance: The Estate of the Artist
Jack Roth
Untitled
1968
Acrylic on canvas
John Levee
American, 1924-2017
August V 1957
Oil on canvas
39 x 39 inches
Signed lower right, titled and dated verso
Provenance: Private Collection, New York, New York; Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, New York
The legendary Irving Penn photographed at Vogue for six decades creating an unprecedented 165 covers. Black and White Vogue Cover (Jean Patchett) graced the first cover of American Vogue in April 1950. It was not only his first cover in black and white but also the magazine’s first non-color cover since May 1932. Unquestionably, this is one of the two most important fashion photographs ever taken along with Richard Avedon’s Dovima and the Elephants , taken in 1955.
Irving Penn
American, 1917-2009
Black and White Vogue Cover (Jean Patchett)
1950 – printed in November 1974
Platinum Palladium print on Rives paper
Hand-coated by the photographer
Image size 16 1/2 x 13 1/2 inches
Sheet size 22 1/4 x 18 1/2 inches
Edition 8/34
Signed, numbered and dated in pencil on verso
Copyright and edition stamps on verso
American, 1933-1989
Upstream
1970
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 60 inches
Signed, titled and dated on canvas overlap
Jay Rosenblum
Ludwig Sander
American, 1906-1975
Pawnee XVII
1974
Oil on canvas
40 x 44 inches
Signed, titled and dated verso
Provenance: The Collection of Dr. Julius and Joan Jacobson, NewYork, New York (label verso)
John Stephan
American, 1906-1995
Disc #9
1971
Acrylic on canvas
62 x 60 inches
Signed: Verso: Signed, titled, dated ‘71, and estate stamped verso
Provenance: The Estate of the Artist
Formento & Formento
American, b. 1964, b. 1975
Allie XIV, Lancaster, CA
2010
Archival pigment print
40 x 60 inches
Framed: 41 1/2 x 61 1/2 inches
Ellen Heck
American, b. 1983
Momo 2021
Oil on Panel
36 x 36 inches
Signed, titled, dated verso
Ellen Heck
American, b. 1983
Sasha Wearing a Toroidal Scherk Surface as a Hat
Woodcut, Drypoint & Hand Painting
15 x 11 inches
Numbered and titled lower left
Contemporary
Contemporary Art refers to art—painting, sculpture, photography, installation, performance, and video art—produced in current day. Many art historians consider the late 1960s (the end of Modern Art or Modernism) to be the starting point of the Contemporary Art genre. In reaction to the preceeding Modern Art movement, Pop Art emerged. Pioneered by artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, pop artists were interested in portraying mass culture. Other contemporary art movements include Photo Realism, Conceptualism, Minimalism, Performance Art, Installation Art, Earth Art, and Street Art.
Will Barnet
American, 1911–2012
Midnight (Study For Midnight)
Graphite on paper
14 3/4 x 8 3/4 inches, Framed: 25 x 19 1/2 inches
Signed Will Barnet lower right
Provenance: Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, New York (label verso)
Exhibited: Flint Institute of Arts, Art of Collecting, Flint, Michigan, November 1999-January 2000
Will Barnet is an artist who steadfastly resisted imitating the trends of the moment, and instead developed a figurative style all his own. Barnet began his career painting self-portraits much like Rembrandt in his parents’ basement in Beverly, Massachusetts, a bedroom community north of Boston. During the 1930s and throughout the Great Depression his works took on a tone of social realism. During the 1950s and 1960s when Abstract Expressionism was all the rage, and the 1970s when Pop Art was fashionable, Barnet’s works remained stubbornly figurative in their representation and portrayal of both casual daily settings as well as dreamlike ones. He clearly saw what no one else did.
Barnet had over 80 solo exhibitions prior to his death at 101 years of age. His works are represented in such notable museums as the Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.
He was quoted as saying, “I didn’t compromise, ever…The old masters are still alive after 400 years, and that’s what I want to be.”
Will Barnet
American, 1911–2012
Old Man’s Afternoon , 1978
Watercolor and pencil on paper 11 x 19 inches
Framed: 24 x 32 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the current owner, private collection, New York, New York
Elmer Bischoff
American, 1916-1991
No. 104
1987
Acrylic on canvas
50 x 52 inches
Signed, titled and dated verso
Provenance: John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, California (label verso); Property from an Estate, Los Angeles, California; Exhibited: Oakland Museum of California, “The Art of Elmer Bischoff”, October 31, 2001 - January 5, 2003 (label verso)
Leon Berkowitz
American, 1911-1987
Untitled 1979
Pastel on Paper
28 1/2 x 21 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Provenance: McKissick Museums at the University of South Carolina
Robert Natkin
American, 1930-2010
Untitled c. early 1970s
Acrylic on canvas
50 x 64 1/4 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Private Collection, United States; Anon sale; Christie’s, New York, 13 February 2020, lot 151; Private Collection, New York, New York
Robert Natkin
American, 1930-2010
Bath-Apollo Series (For J. & W.R.) 1976
Acrylic on canvas
65 x 108 inches
Signed lower left
Provenance: Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York; Acquired directly from the above by the present owner; Exhibited: New York, Andre Emmerich Gallery
Robert Natkin has been called a ‘visual poet’ whose subtle abstractions evoke for the viewer enchanting physical and spiritual realms. Despite their look of deceptive serenity, his paintings challenge the viewer to travel inward, and spark an intimacy that is long-lasting and transforming.
The artist’s work often runs in series using columns, grids and shifting planes. These paintings, with vertical stripes alternating between thick and thin, decorative and textured, are cheerful and light. Natkin’s painting is inspired by the color of Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard, and the Cubism of Paul Klee, in addition to female jazz singers like Nina Simone, and films, particularly the work of Alfred Hitchcock.
Natkin was born in Chicago and graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1952. He married painter Judith Dolnick and they lived in Chicago where Natkin and a friend opened the Wells Street Gallery to give young Chicago artists a chance to market their artwork. The gallery operated from 1957 to 1959. After the Wells Gallery closed, Natkin moved to New York and began showing with Poindexter Gallery. Today, his work may be found in major museums and private collections around the world.
James Francis Day
American, 1863-1942
Oil on canvas
46 1/2 x 52 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (label verso)
Tangles
George Vranesh
American, 1926-2014
Lady in the Forest 1957
Oil on Canvas 40 x 30 inches
Signed upper right
Provenance: The Estate of the Artist
Jean F. Monchablon
French, 1854-1904
Soleil a Rosee sur la Vallon de L’Apance
Oil on panel
17 x 12 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: By descent in the Collection of a prominent Maine Family
Ben Austrian
American, 1870-1921
Twenty-five Chicks and a Yellow Butterfly
1901
Oil on canvas
10 x 35 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Julian Onderdonk is a legend of Texas Impressionism.
Onderdonk is widely regarded as the father of “bluebonnet painters”; a landscape tradition that epitomizes an authentically Texas experience. Born in San Antonio, Julian Onderdonk was trained by his father artist Robert Jenkins Onderdonk and enrolled at the Art Students League in New York at age 19. He studied under American Impressionist William Merritt Chase and at the New York School with Frank Vincent Dumond. His work is represented in many public and private collections, and in 2001 received special recognition when three paintings were loaned to the White House at the request of President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush. Other collections to hold Onderdonk works include the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, and Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
Julian Onderdonk
American, 1882–1922
Blue Bonnets, Gray Morning 1915
Oil on canvas
8 x 10 inches
Framed: 14 x 16 inches
Signed lower right
Provenance: The Artist to Nell Pryor (1915); Nell Pryor was Onderdonk’s painting student; Thus by descent in the family in Denver, Colorado
Robert Preusser
American, 1919-1992
Abstract 1946 Oil on Masonite 12 x 9 inches
Signed and dated lower left
Provenance: Private Collection, New Hampshire
Nico W. Jungmann
Dutch, 1872-1935
Madonna and Child
Tempera on panel
19 5/8 x 14 5/8 inches
Signed lower right
Titled verso ’Madonna and Child, Firenze’
Provenance:
Private collection, England
Ezio Martinelli
American, 1913-1980
Untitled 1949
Oil on Canvas
60 x 48 inches
Provenance:
Private Collection, Chicago, Illinois
André Brasilier
French, b. 1929
La Robe Étoilée
1983
Oil on canvas
50 3/4 x 38 inches
Signed lower right
Note: Authenticity confirmed by Alexis Brasilier.
Provenance: Private Collection, Japan
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
—John Keats
Cover and back cover image: Harry Wilson Watrous, Japanese Still Life, detail, see pg 18
Back cover: Ray Parker, #6, 1955, detail, see pg 26-27
Inside front and inside back cover: Lucien Adrion, Jardin du Luxembourg, see pg 6
Title page: Paul Brach, Merlin, detail, see pg 24
Page 2: Will Barnet, Final Study For “Atalanta”, see pg 4
Page 3: Kathryn Baker Schorr at Baker Schorr Fine Art, photograph by Audrey Benninghoff
Page 34-35: photograph by Audrey Benninghoff
Design by Lilla Hangay, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Printing: Capital Printing, Austin, Texas
© Copyright 2024 All rights reserved. No portion of this catalog may be reproduced, stored in any form, of transmitted by any means, without written permission from Baker Schorr Fine Art.
Kathryn Schorr, owner/director
Camila Brooks, gallery associate
Julie Musselman, gallery associate
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