Edsel Cramer

Early Modern Watercolor Landscape of Buildings in Downtown San Francisco

1940s - 1950s

Steinberg's Holiday Magazine Cover, " The North of Jersey " is similar to his famous New Yorker Cover "View of the World from 9th Avenue”. ...

Oscar Bluemner Sheepshead, Long Island, 1907 Signed with the artist's conjoined initials "OB" and dated "4-30 - 5 - 30" / "Aug 3, 07" Watercolor on paper 6 x 10 inches Provenance: J...

Lionel S. Reiss (1894 - 1988) New York City Skyline View from the East River Watercolor on paper 13 x 19 inches Signed lower left In describing his own style, Lionel Reiss wrote, “By nature, inclination, and training, I have long since recognized the fact that...I belong to the category of those who can only gladly affirm the reality of the world I live in.” Reiss’s subject matter was wide-ranging, including gritty New York scenes, landscapes of bucolic Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and seascapes around Gloucester, Massachusetts. However, it was as a painter of Jewish life—both in Israel and in Europe before World War II—that Reiss excelled. I.B. Singer, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, noted that Reiss was “essentially an artist of the nineteenth century, and because of this he had the power and the courage to tell visually the story of a people.” Although Reiss was born in Jaroslaw, Poland, his family immigrated to the United States in 1898 when he was four years old. Reiss's family settled on New York City’s Lower East Side and he lived in the city for most of his life. Reiss attended the Art Students League and then worked as a commercial artist for newspapers and publishers. As art director for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he supposedly created the studio’s famous lion logo. After World War I, Reiss became fascinated with Jewish life in the ‘Old World.’ In 1921 he left his advertising work and spent the next ten years traveling in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Like noted Jewish photographers Alter Kacyzne and Roman Vishniac, Reiss depicted Jewish life in Poland prior to World War II. He later wrote, “My trip encompassed three main objectives: to make ethnic studies of Jewish types wherever I traveled; to paint and draw Jewish life, as I saw it and felt it, in all aspects; and to round out my work in Israel.” In Europe, Reiss recorded quotidian scenes in a variety of media and different settings such as Paris, Amsterdam, the Venice ghetto, the Jewish cemetery in Prague, and an array of shops, synagogues, streets, and marketplaces in the Jewish quarters of Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lublin, Vilna, Ternopil, and Kovno. He paid great attention to details of dress, hair, and facial features, and his work became noted for its descriptive quality. A selection of Reiss’s portraits appeared in 1938 in his book My Models Were Jews. In this book, published on the eve of the Holocaust, Reiss argued that there was “no such thing as a ‘Jewish race’.” Instead, he claimed that the Jewish people were a cultural group with a great deal of diversity within and between Jewish communities around the world. Franz Boas...

Lou's Landing - Original Watercolor On Paper Original watercolor on paper by Ray Skelton (American 20th c.), depicting a boat harbor with numerous boats tied up, some sailing. Lou's...

California Lake Landscape in Watercolor on Paper Serene landscape by Donna N. Schuster (American, 1883-1953). The viewer stands at the edge of a lake, under a few trees. At the far ...

A Mid-Century Modern, 1950s Cubist watercolor of a brightly-colored dock scene by Chicago and New York artist Rita Duis (Astley-Bell). Signed "Duis", lower left. Artwork size: 8 1/...

A dynamic 1930s, WPA era industrial scene watercolor of a steel mill factory worker by notable Chicago Modern artist, Harold Haydon. A wonderful example of early Twentieth Century a...

A dynamic 1930s, WPA era industrial scene watercolor of steel mill factory workers by notable Chicago Modern artist, Harold Haydon. A wonderful example of early Twentieth Century ar...

A dynamic 1930s, WPA era industrial scene watercolor of steel mill and factory workers by notable Chicago Modern artist, Harold Haydon. A wonderful example of the artwork from the e...

A dynamic 1930s, WPA era industrial scene watercolor of a steel mill and factory workers by notable Chicago Modern artist, Harold Haydon. A wonderful example of early Twentieth Cent...