Holiday Selections
from Driscoll Babcock
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HOLIDAY SELECTIONS
for the 2017-2018 Season
Established 1852 New York, New York 10011
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Benjamin West (1738-1820) RINALDO AND ARMIDA, c. 1766 Oil on paper laid down on board, 15 ½ x 19 inches
$48,000
Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley recognized this painting as the oil sketch for the 26 x 32 inch painting dated 1766 in the collection of the Rutgers University Art Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ. A related graphite sketch on paper was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2016. Benjamin West was a phenomenal artistic talent to rose from humble origins in rural Pennsylvania to become President of the Royal Academy in London, Painter to King George III and one of the most influential painters to emerge from the 18th century. West was a painter of portraits, landscape, historical and mythological scenes, and in this instance, he paints a key scene from Torquato Tasso’s 1581 epic poem “Jerusalem Liberata” in which the pagan princess Armida has been sent to assassinate the fierce, honorable Christian Crusader Rinaldo. Armida however, falls instantly in love with Rinaldo and must contrive a way to keep him alive. Looking in on this scene from behind are Rinaldo’s protectors Ubaldo and Charles. It is a complicated classic tale of love, war, deceit, entrapment and ultimately, a happy ending. It was the artist’s practice to produce monochrome sketches in oil on paper for his more ambitious paintings, and of note, the present work seems to be the earliest such sketch to have come to light.
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James David Smillie (1833-1909) ON THE HUDSON Oil on canvas, 8 x 6 inches
$12,000
Like so many Hudson River School artists, Smillie began life as an engraver of bank notes and certificates. From this he developed, without the benefit of a painting master, a superb hand for precise linear draftsmanship and an astute appreciation for tonal color values. This formed the foundation of his beautifully rendered and subtley colored landscape paintings such as ON THE HUDSON. Smillie became a central figure among the painters of his generation and participated in major exhibition throughout the entire country. ON THE HUDSON sparkles with the quality of his brushwork and color, and retains its original frame, and a label, in Smillie’s hand, which reads: James D. Smillie/Room W6 (indistinct) Dodsworth Bld./Cor. 26th & 5th. Ave.
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Robert Brandegee (1849-1942) APPLES UNDER TREE, 1868 Watercolor on paper, 8 ½ inches diameter
$28,000
Robert Brandegee is both one of the rarest and most talented of the rarefied group of painters known as the American Pre-Raphaelites. In this exceptional example, painted just a year after he participated in the First Annual Exhibition of the American Society of Painters in Water Color, the artist’s brilliant and exacting technique, luminous color and microscopic examination of forms create an iconic image of the era, and of the style. The influence of John Ruskin’s admonition to be precise in representing nature is here fully manifest, and Brandegee’s position as an important American Pre-Raphaelite is secured by such magnificent accomplishments.
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Edward Middleton Manigault (1887-1922) $18,000 WHITE ORCHIDS, c. 1921-1922 Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 â…› inches Inscribed on verso: Painted by E. Middleton Manigault 1921 or 1922 in California / Gertrude R. Manigault (widow of artist) / July 16 1944-West Palm Beach, Fla.
WHITE ORCHIDS has a distinguished lineage. It was originally owned by Mrs. E. Douglas Graydon, an important patron of the artist, and was formerly in the collection of the Norton Museum of Art. Manigault exhibited two paintings in the 1913 New York Armory Show, THE CLOWN, 1912 and SIX WOMEN, ADAGIO, 1912. THE CLOWN was purchased from the exhibition by Arthur Jerome Eddy and J. Paul Getty, major avant-garde art collectors. Manigault was a brilliant and dynamic modernist painter whose work presages important aspects that developed over the two decades following his untimely early death at age 35.
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Charles Webster Hawthorne (1872-1930) THE PINK DRESS, c. 1912 Oil on canvas laid over artist’s board, 30 x 25 inches Signed upper left / Inscribed with title thrice on verso
$28,000
Hawthorne was mentored by William Merritt Chase and became one of the most revered American artists of the first thirty years of the twentieth century. His artistic forebears also included Manet and Velasquez from whom he imbued his own subjects with a distinct psychological presence. His paintings were more accessible than those of Thomas Eakins, yet endowed with more candor than many of his contemporariy figure painters. He won more than two dozen medals and awards at major national and international exhibitions and saw his work enter major museums across the country. This distinguished painting is further enhanced by its having descended with an unbroken provenance, within the Hawthorne family.
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Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) COMPOTE, FRUIT AND VASE, 1923-1927 Graphite on paper, 17 ½ x 23 inches
$48,000
Marsden Hartley is one of the most important American modernist masters. Among his works are a group of paintings, drawings and lithographs of still life subjects, done largely in Berlin, or in France. Among the drawings is a very small group of large scale works, fully developed, and completed by Hartley as independent compositions. COMPOTE, FRUIT AND VASE is one of those beautifully rendered and carefully composed large drawings. Here the fluency of his draftsmanship, his love of the subtle tonal scale that he could achieve with graphite and the compositional torque and tension that only Hartley could invest in his subjects is readily apparent.
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Edgar Levy (1907-1975) $3,500 INTERIOR, 1934 Oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches Signed, inscribed and dated on verso: INTERIOR Spring 1934 Edgar Levy Inscribed on stretcher: EDGAR LEVY 121 JORALEMON ST BKLYN
Levy was a leading light and intimate friend of David Smith, with whom he shared a studio for many years, as well as Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb from the early 1930s to the early 1950s. He was also an intimate of John Graham from whom he acquired an early and superb collection of African sculpture which played an important role in the development of his imagery. This intimate scene portrays Levy’s wife, the brilliant illustrator Lucille Corcos, in their home on the Hudson where their friends and neighbors included such New York royalty of the 1930s as Maxwell Anderson, Henry Varnum Poor, Lotte Lenya and many others.
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Winold Reiss (1886-1953) RED BARN, c.1935 Watercolor on paper, 22 x 30 inches Signed lower left: WINOLD / REISS
$9,500
In the 1920s and 1930s, Winold Reiss traveled to Glacier National Park financed by the Great Northern Railway. During this time, he executed notable portraits of the Blackfeet and Blood Indians of Montana and in Canada, many of which were then used to illustrate the Great Northern Railway’s promotional calendars. Reiss was very active traveling and teaching, including his own art school in New York City, a summer school in Woodstock, New York, and during the 1930s he conducted the Winold Reiss Summer School in Glacier Park, Montana. When traveling on the Great Northern Railroad, Reiss would have traveled from New York to Chicago, Minnesota and through North Dakota, and would have seen landscapes anywhere along that route similar to the one depicted in RED BARN. He produced a number of landscapes during his long, productive career and their execution was motivated by something more than the romanticism of place. They were experiments in the use of color to fashion spatial design.
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Charles Sheeler (1883-1965) $28,000 BIRCH TREE, 1951 Vintage silver gelatin print, 8 x 5 ½ inches Signed, dated and dedicated to William Carlos Williams: “To Flossie and Bill from the Sheeler’s/C.S. 1951.”
Charles Sheeler, painter and photographer, is among America’s most distinguished modernists artists. Among his memorable series of images, is the overtly metaphorical BIRCH TREE SERIES of 1951. In this instance, the image is inscribed “To Flossie and Bill from the Sheeler’s/C.S. 1951.” The friendship between Sheeler and the great American poet William Carlos Williams had begun in the early 1920’s and soon after William’s acquired Sheeler’s STILL LIFE WITH ETRUSCAN VASE. Their friendship lasted throughout their lives and this photograph, with its historic inscription, provides insight to their long friendship, as well as to Sheeler’s ongoing exploration of the photographic medium’s expressive possibilities.
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Alan Gussow (1931-1997) FORMAGERY, 1975 Oil on canvas, 18 x 14 inches
$5,000
Alan Gussow is among America’s most distinguished artists. Renowned for his inventive and tenacious blend of abstraction and realism, Gussow’s artistic vision is poetic and profound. In a career that spanned nearly fifty years, he achieved significant recognition as an artist, environmental activist, and educator. Gussow’s unique imagery captures the intimate link between man and the environment, invoking his personal encounters with the smells, sounds, tastes, and sensations of nature. His work is infused with deep cultural and environmental insights, rooted in a beautifully refined aesthetic, and a visual celebration of the places he explored and experienced passionately.
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Mark Tobey (1890-1976) UNTITLED #11, 1957 Tempera on paper, 5 ⅞ x 5 ⅞ inches Signed and dated lower right
$15,000
Mark Tobey was one of the best known and internationally respected artists during the 1950s and 1960s and continues to be a leading figure of 20th century American art. Central to the themes and style of his art is Tobey’s devotion to Bahá’ísm, a faith driven by a sense of oneness, universality, and unity of mankind. Tobey’s techniques and methods evidence his interest in the unity of the image, rather than its separate parts, as he often created complex, allover compositions with no central focal point. Tobey was influenced by textiles, script, and pictographs, as well as the structures and patterns in our contemporary urban and natural worlds. The seemingly opposing interests in religion and science, the spiritual and material, East and West, and past and present, all fuse in his work to a unique equilibrium and characterize his distinct and highly influential style. In 1956 Tobey was awarded the United States National Prize in the Guggenheim International Awards and elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Tobey was represented in the Venice XXIV Biennale in 1948, and became the first American since James Abbot Whistler in the 19th century to win the Painting Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1959.
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Andy Warhol (1928-1987) $4,000 FLOWERS - VINTAGE POSTER INVITATION FOR WARHOL EXHIBITION AT LEO CASTELLI GALLERY, 1964 Offset Lithograph on paper, 21 ¾ x 21 ¾ inches Printed on verso: Leo Castelli / 4 E. 77 New York 21 / Andy Warhol / 21 Nov.-17 Dec.
The FLOWERS image is based on a photograph of hibiscus flowers by Patricia Caulfield, published in Modern Photograph, June 1964 of which Warhol created both paintings and prints. In addition to the offset lithographs in an approximate edition of 300, a large group (edition size unknown) of these posters were also folded and used as invitations to the November/December 1964 Warhol exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, NYC.
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Judith Lauand (b.1922) ACERVO 578, 1989 Oil on canvas, 23 ½ x 23 ½ inches Signed and dated lower right
$20,000
Lauand is a distinguished figure of postwar abstraction and Latin American art. Lauand (b. Pontal, São Paulo, Brazil) was a formative participant in the longstanding Brazilian constructivist project, and has emerged internationally as an artist who negotiated the social constraints of her position as a woman and the innovative painterly strategies she defined in the rational discourse of Concretism. Lauand’s abstractions are a carefully calibrated reading of line, shape, and space, and her authorial application of the language of geometry is equally guided by objectivity, mathematical rigor, and precision. In the 1950s, her aesthetic syncretism with São Paulo-based Concretism provided her opportunities to exchange ideas and exhibit as the only female member among the prominent group of artists who formed the avant-garde movement called Grupo Ruptura.
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Rainer Gross (b. 1951) UNTITLED, 2005 Oil and pigments on somerset paper, 18 x 14 inches Signed with initials and inscribed on verso: RG 05/ 8-05
$4,000
New York painter known for the dense and weathered surfaces of his paintings, realized through layers of pressed pigments.
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Publication Š 2017 Driscoll Babcock Galleries, LLC Driscoll Babcock Galleries 529 West 20th Street | 8E New York, NY 10011 +1 212.767.1852 info@driscollbabcock.com www.driscollbabcock.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Driscoll Babcock Galleries.
Cover image: Robert Brandegee (1849-1942), APPLES UNDER TREE, 1868, Watercolor on paper, 8 ½ inches diameter (detail). 33