Alan Cotton

HUGE ! English Original Impressionist oil painting TAMAR BRIDGE DEVON CORNWALL

1998

John Edward Costigan, N.A. American, 1888-1972 Bathers Oil on canvas Signed ‘J.E. Costigan N.A.’ lower left 20 by 24 in. W/frame 26 by 30 in. John Costigan was born of Irish-American parents in Providence, Rhode Island, February 29, 1888. He was a cousin of the noted American showman, George M. Cohan, whose parents brought the young Costigan to New York City and was instrumental in starting him on a career in the visual arts. They were less successful in encouraging him to pursue formal studies at the Art Students League (where, however, he later taught) than in exposing him to the commercial art world through the job they had gotten him with the New York lithographing firm that made their theatrical posters. At the H. C. Miner Lithographing Company, Costigan worked his way up from his entry job as a pressroom helper, through various apprenticeships, to the position of sketch artist. In the latter capacity he was an uncredited designer of posters for the Ziegfeld Follies and for numerous silent films. Meanwhile, he had supplemented his very meager formal studies in the fine arts with a self-teaching discipline that led to his first professional recognition in 1920 with the receipt of prizes for an oil painting and watercolor in separate New York exhibitions. A year earlier, Costigan had wed professional model Ida Blessin, with whom he established residence and began raising a family in the sleepy little rural New York hamlet of Orangeburg, the setting for the many idyllic farm landscapes and wood interiors with which he was to become identified in a career that would span half a century. John Costigan’s first national recognition came in 1922 with his winning of the coveted Peterson Purchase prize of the Art Institute of Chicago for an oil on canvas, “Sheep at the Brook.” It marked the start of an unbroken winning streak that would gain him at least one important prize per year for the remainder of the decade. The nation’s art journalists and critics began to take notice, making him the recurring subject of newspaper features and magazine articles. The eminent author and critic Edgar Holger Cahill was just a fledgling reporter when he wrote his first feature, “John Costigan Carries the Flame,” for Shadowland Magazine in 1922. Costigan had his first one-man show of paintings at the Rehn Gallery on New York’s 5th Avenue in November, 1924, to be followed less than three years later by another at the Art Institute of Chicago. In addition, Costigan’s work has been—and continues to be included, side-by-side with that of some of America’s most high-profile artists, in museum and gallery exhibitions throughout the country. His renown had peaked in the early 1930s, by which time his work had been honored with nearly every major award then being bestowed in the fine arts and had been acquired for the permanent collections of several prestigious American museums, including New York’s Metropolitan (which only recently, in 1997, deaccessioned his “Wood Interior,” acquired in 1934). Although Costigan’s celebrity had ebbed by the late 1930s, the Smithsonian Institution saw fit in 1937 to host an exhibition exclusively of his etchings. And, in 1941, the Corcoran Gallery (also Washington, D.C.) similarly honored him for his watercolors. (Another Washington institution, the Library of Congress, today includes 22 Costigan etchings and lithographs in its permanent print collection.) During World War II, Costigan returned briefly to illustrating, mainly for Bluebook, a men’s pulp adventure magazine. A gradual revival of interest in his more serious work began at the end of the war, culminating in 1968 with the mounting of a 50-year Costigan retrospective at the Paine Art Center and Arboretum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Oils, watercolors and prints were borrowed from museums and private collections throughout the country, and the exhibition was subsequently toured nationally by the Smithsonian Institution. John Costigan died of pneumonia in Nyack, NY, August 5, 1972, just months after receiving his final prestigious award —the Benjamin West Clinedinst Medal of the Artist’s Fellowship, Inc., presented in general recognition of his “...achievement of exceptional artistic merit...” in the various media he had mastered in the course of his career. This painting depicts one of the artist's favorite themes --the farm family bathing...

Merio Ameglio Italian, 1897-1970 Notre Dame, Autonne Oil on Canvas 18 by 21 ½ in. W/frame 26 by 29 ½ in. Signed lower left & titled on reverse Merio noted impressionist painter p...

Andre Gisson American, 1921-2003 Mother & Child in a Landscape Oil on canvas 24 by 36 in. W/frame 32 by 44 in. Signed lower left Framed in an important Carrig Rohane frame...

Wilhelm von Gegerfelt Swedish, 1844-1920 Moonlight Over the Promenade Oil on canvas 27 by 45 in. W/frame 39 by 57 in. Signed lower right Wilh...

Jacqueline Caroline Marie Cerrano French, 1920-2007 Antibes Oil on canvas Signed & dated “1967” on reverse 32 by 39 ½ in. W/frame 40 by 47 ½ in. Jacqueline made her debut at the S...

“I Will”, Marie-Joseph-Leon-Clavel French, 1850-1923 Septembre, La Meuse a Dordrecht Oil on canvas, Signed 13 ¼ by 19 ½ in. W/frame 23 ¼ by 29 ½ in. Marie-Joseph-Leon-Clavel took ...

Georges d'Espagnat French, 1870 - 1950 Les Vendanges Signed gdE (lower left)  Oil on canvas 67 by 43 in. W/frame 71 by 47 in. Born at Melun on 14th August 1870, Georges d’Espagnat...

Marcel Dyf French, 1899-1985 Djeuner Champtre Oil on canvas 23 ½ by 28 ¾ in. W/frame 31 ½ by 36 ¾ in. Signed lower left Marcel Dyf (Marcel Dreyfus) was born in Paris on October 7,...

Gaston Sebire French, 1920-2002 At The Seaside Oil on canvas 25 by 31 in. W/frame 33 ½ by 39 ½ in. Signed lower right Gaston Sebire (1920 – 2002) Gaston Sebire, was one of Europe’s leading landscapists, was born in the village of Saint-Samson in Normandy in 1920. A self taught artist, he began to paint seriously at the age of eighteen. For eight years he worked as a postal clerk in the Rouen, sorting letters at night in order to support his career as a painter. In 1952 Gaston Sebire had his first exhibition at the Galerie Gosselin in Paris. The following years he enjoyed the double triumph of winning both the coveted Prix de la Critique and the Prix Casa Velasquez. The Latter award made it possible for him to spend a year and a half in Spain. Of this formative period he said, “They were my first, wonderful years without worry. For fifteen years I had never known what the next day would bring.” The year 1957 marked another important stage in his career. His painting “La Dinde” won the Greenshields Prize in a field of 136 competitors, making it possible for him to paint for another two years without the worry of finances. Winning the awards naturally drew public attention to the artist from Normandy, and his works were presented in highly successful one-man shows in Paris. Sebire was a Norman, a man strongly attached to the soil, and after his exhibitions in Paris, he returned to Rouen to his large house overlooking the town and once again plunged into painting the countryside. Gaston Sebire was a strongly built man with square hands and a rather heavy walk. He had immense vitality, and used that to his advantage.  As he said of himself, “When the snow falls, I can’t stay indoors. I set out with my paint box. I paint outdoors from nine in the morning until five at night. If it were only a question of money, one could just as well paint in one’s own room.” But Sebire went into the countryside, or into the village, and sets up his easel. When there is a café into which people are going; there is a fence, a telegraph pole, a few buildings in the background. The scene takes on life, vivid life, with a sense of some event about to take place in the scene. Like many artists, and like a typical Norman, Sebire was silent and solitary by nature, with a personality as strong and frank as his paintings. A painting, he says, “must have an element of mystery, show an effort to look beyond the aura surface of things.” Sebire’s early paintings were somber with much use of black and white tones. In 1970 he turned to colour. The subtle light of the Normandy skies; the shifting light and color along the seacoast; the magnificent blues of the Rouen pottery...

Louis Aston Knight New York/California/France, 1873-1948 Twilight along the River Bend Oil on canvas signed lower left"Aston Knight/Paris" 26 by 32 in. ...