1940s Paintings

Gorgeous desert landscape with a smoke tree and other desert plants by Vina McPheeters (American, 1892-1964). Signed "Vina McPheeters" in the lower right corner. Presented in a gilt-toned gold and black frame. Image size: 20"H x 24"W. Vina Pearl McPheeters (American, 1892-1964) was born in Iowa on October 7, 1892. Vina was the wife of Robert Guy McPheeters. By 1930 she had settled in southern California into a home in Montebello (Los Angeles County). She died in Glendale, CA on April 23, 1964. She exhibited in her home town of Van Nuys California, studied with Hanson Puthuff, Jack Wilkinson Smith and Bennett Bradbury...

Six O-Clock, c. 1942, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, signed and titled several times verso of frame and stretcher (perhaps by another hand), marked “Rehn” several times on frame (for the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York City, who represented Craig at the time); Exhibited: 1) 18th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings from March 21 to May 2, 1943 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. #87, original price $450 (per catalog) (exhibition label verso), 2) Craig’s one-man show at the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, New York City, from October 26 to November 14, 1942, #10 (original price listed as $350); and 3) Exhibition of thirty paintings sponsored by the Harrisburg Art Association at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg in March, 1944 (concerning this exhibit, Penelope Redd of The Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) wrote: “Other paintings that have overtones of superrealism inherent in the subjects include Tom Craig’s California nocturne, ‘Six O’Clock,’ two figures moving through the twilight . . . .” March 6, 1944, p. 13); another label verso from The Museum of Art of Toledo (Ohio): original frame: Provenance includes George Stern Gallery, Los Angeles, CA About the Painting Long before Chris Burden’s iconic installation outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Urban Light, another artist, Tom Craig, made Southern California streetlights the subject of one of his early 1940s paintings. Consisting of dozens of recycled streetlights from the 1920s and 1930s forming a classical colonnade at the museum’s entrance, Burden’s Urban Light has become a symbol of Los Angeles. For Burden, the streetlights represent what constitutes an advanced society, something “safe after dark and beautiful to behold.” It seems that Craig is playing on the same theme in Six O-Clock. Although we see two hunched figures trudging along the sidewalk at the end of a long day, the real stars of this painting are the streetlights which brighten the twilight and silhouette another iconic symbol of Los Angeles, the palm trees in the distance. Mountains in the background and the distant view of a suburban neighborhood join the streetlights and palm trees as classic subject matter for a California Scene painting, but Craig gives us a twist by depicting the scene not as a sun-drenched natural expanse. Rather, Craig uses thin layers of oil paint, mimicking the watercolor technique for which he is most famous, to show us the twinkling beauty of manmade light and the safety it affords. Although Southern California is a land of natural wonders, the interventions of humanity are already everywhere in Los Angeles and as one critic noted, the resulting painting has an air of “superrealism.” About the Artist Thomas Theodore Craig was a well-known fixture in the Southern California art scene. He was born in Upland California. Craig graduated with a degree in botany from Pomona College and studied painting at Pamona and the Chouinard Art School with Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Barse Miller among others. He became close friends with fellow artist Milford Zornes...

Alexander Sharpe Ross - or Alex Ross. This mid-century masterpiece is a perfect artistic statement with every formal element in perfect harmo...

Still life with geraniums and abalone shells by Rose Lillian Campbell (American, 1888-1965). Presented in a wood frame. Signed "Rose Campbell" and dated "1944" lower right. Image siz...

Impressive early American modernist interior view still life painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. Image size, 34 by 40 inches.

"Pay Day" American Scene Social Realism WPA Era Mid 20th Century Modern Workers Don Freeman (1908-1978) Pay Day 20 x 30 inches Oil on board, c. 1940s Signed lower right BIO Illustr...

This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness. Oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches, Signed lower right Exhibited: 1) [Solo E...

My Only Working Tool, 1949, oil on panel, signed and dated lower right, 16 x 12 inches, remnant of exhibition label verso, exhibited at the Art News Second Annual National Amateur Competition, National Academy of Design, New York, NY, December, 1950 (see The Best Amateurs, Art News, volume 49, issue 8, December 6 to 20, 1950, p. 65 – 66), presented in a period frame Fausto Sansone...

Important and exhibited American impressionist dock scene by Junius Allen (1898 - 1962). Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed. Image size, measuring 25 by 30 inches.

Charming 1940s modernist mountain landscape painting featuring a white farmhouse, outbuildings, and trees set in a verdant meadow near Gunnison, on the western slope of Colorado. Maj...

Though born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, artist Ralph Von Lehmden (1908-1970) was the grandson of a German count. He became a noted painter and designer. Lehmden attended the Cleve...

Fiocchetto is an artwork realized by Elica Balla (Rome,1914 - 1993) Hand signed lower right. Hand signed and titled o rear. Good conditions!

Vintage American school signed original oil painting. Oil on board, circa 1950. Signed. Displayed in a period frame. Image, 24"L x 18"H.

Figurative Cubist Surrealist Abstraction Mid 20th Century American Modern Large O. Louis Guglielmi (1906 - 1956) OBSESSIVE THEME 44 x 33 inches Oil on canvas Signed and dated '48 lo...

Medium: Oil on Canvas Signature: Signed Lower Right Du Pont Safety Calendar, 1941, June # 2270 in the Catalogue Raisonné, 2009

Original oil painting on artist canvas board painting by the California artist, Fern F. Cunningham. Signed lower right. Titled in pencil on stretcher verso. Circa 1940. Condition is very good. Recently professionally cleaned. The painting is housed in its original period frame. Overall framed measurements are 14.5 by 17.5 inches. Provenance: A Sarasota, Florida collector. Fern Cunningham Stone (1889-1975). She was born in Defiance, Ohio on August 4, 1889. A painter, she specialized in impressionist still life works, landscapes, and seascapes of California. Born Fern F. Smith, she married Napoleon Arthur...

Marc Mouclier (1866-1947) Le Drapeau à la fenêtre, 1942 (The Flag in the window) signed and dated lower right oil on cardboard panel 41 x 32,8 cm framed 62 x 54 cm This magnificent...

A fine impressionist winter landscape by German American artist Charles Jacob Young (aka C. Jac Jung) (1880-1940). Young was born in Rodenbach, Bavaria, Germany, immigrated to the Un...

Seymour Franks Duo, 1947 Signed and dated lower right Oil on canvas 44 x 37 inches Seymour Franks, 1916-1981, originated from New York City, where he was born in 1916. At just 16 y...

Very nicely painted American school abstract landscape painting. Framed in a period modernist wood molding. Oil on board. Image size, 24H by 29L.

Lionel S. Reiss (1894 - 1988) Lobstermen in Gloucester, Massachusetts, circa 1943 Watercolor on paper Sight 17 1/2 x 23 inches Signed lower left Provenance: Private Collection, Las Vegas, Nevada 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...

Still life with cucumbers and Borjomi Middle of the 1940s, oil on cardboard, 51x66 cm Harijs Veldre (Bullis till 1947) (1927.8.III – 1999.6.V) Harijs Veldre learned in Riga school ...

Original World War II-era advertisement commissioned by Republic Steel to promote War Bonds and Stamps, published 1943. Medium: Oil on board Artwork: 2...

Post Impressionist oil on canvas still life painting by the New York artist, Frances Joan Kruszewski. Initialed bottom right and dated 1942. In very good original condition; no restorations. Original gesso over wood gold leaf frame in fine condition. Overall 21.25 by 17.25 inches. Provenance: Port Jervis, New York estate. A painter of post-impressionist landscapes and still lifes, Kruszewski was born on August 30, 1921 in New York City and died in Locust Valley, New York on July 18, 1971. Education: Studied under Edgar Whitney, AWS; Marion B. Brown, AWS; Paul Puzinas, Anthony Toney...

Judith Rothschild 1921 - New York 1– 1993 Untitled Circa 1945 Gouache, watercolor and ink with Collage on blue paper 9 x 12 inches (23 x 30.5 cm) Framed: 16 ½ x 19 ½ inches (42 x 49...

Cover of The Saturday Evening Post, February 5, 1949 Label on back is Falter’s handwriting, his daughter said Curtis Publishing probably titled it “meeting the Date”. The Episcopal ...

Colour Television Gouache 51 x 31 cm Provenance: The family of A. E. Halliwell. Little is known about the artist other than the fact that he studied under the celebrated artist A...

Illustrated for the 1949 Four Seasons Calendar, published by Brown and Bigelow. A young girl holds a freshly-picked bouquet of flowers as she strolls alongside a boy who carries he...

This lovely British portrait oil painting is by noted artist Lionel Ellis. Painted circa 1940, the picture is a half-length seated portrait of a smiling woman wrapped in a red shawl,...

Spanish Beauty (Portrait of the Artist's Wife) Oil on canvas, c. 1940's Signed upper right "A.G. Warshawsky" (see photo) According to the daughter-in-law of the artist, this painting...

6022 Antique Italian rural landscape oil painting, Set in a period gilt frame Image size 8x9" Signed lower left

Impressive early American modernist still life oil painting. Framed. Oil on canvas. Signed. Image size, 10H by 8L.

Antique French modernist Paris school cityscape street scene oil painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed. Measuring 27 by 40 inches overall and 26 by 39 painting alone. In excellent...

Riders of Pigeon Hill, c. 1940s, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 24 x 36 inches, label verso with title, artist’s name and address; same information inscribed verso; ex-collection...

Artist: Jean Louis Liberte, French (1896 - 1965) Title: Rockport, Maine Year: circa 1940 Medium: Acrylic on Board, signed l.r. Image Size: 12 x 21 in. (30.48 x 53.34 cm) Frame Size: ...

Impressive and large mid century abstract painting. Signed and dated illegibly lower right. Oil on canvas.

Old World, by 1943, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 43 ½ x 30 ½ inches, artist’s name and title inscribed verso; exhibited 1) Romantic Painting in America, Museum of Modern Art, N...

Artist: Francesc Domingo i Segura (Barcelona, 1893 – São Paulo, 1974) Title: Portrait of a Lady with Red Fan Technique: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 76 × 56 cm (29.9 × 22 in), unframed Signature: Signed lower left “F. Domingo” Estimated Date: ca. 1945–1955 Provenance: Private collection Condition Report: Homogeneous superficial craquelure across the surface, especially in the background; varnish possibly not original, with slight yellowing. No paint losses or visible dirt. Canvas stable and well-stretched. DESCRIPTION This female portrait depicts a distinguished woman dressed in a floral-patterned gown in green and pink tones, holding a red fan that provides contrast and character to the composition. The sitter, with a serene expression and a slightly melancholic gaze, is softly illuminated, highlighting the texture of her hair and the delicacy of her skin. The work exemplifies Francesc Domingo’s mature style, where his academic beginnings merge with a livelier palette and touches of modernity, particularly visible in the treatment of patterns. The pink background, with loose brushwork and an almost abstract texture, enhances the sitter’s presence. ARTIST BIOGRAPHY Francesc Domingo i Segura (Barcelona, 1893 – São Paulo, 1974) was one of the most versatile Catalan painters of the 20th century. Trained at the Escola Superior de Belles Oficis of the Mancomunitat, he began in the Noucentisme movement and later traveled to Paris, where he absorbed the influence of Cézanne, Cubism, and modern currents. In the 1930s, he cultivated social realism with scenes of Barcelona’s Paral·lel district and the working-class world. After the Spanish Civil War, he went into exile in Latin America, residing first in Buenos Aires and later in São Paulo, where he taught printmaking and co-founded the Grupo Bisonte. His work, with both European influences and local echoes, is represented in museums such as the MNAC and in international collections. SIMILAR ARTISTS For his focus on portraiture and the fusion of academicism and modernity, Francesc Domingo can be compared with: Ricardo Macarrón...

Tranquil figurative landscape of two people sitting on a dock by a lake near Medina, Ohio by Joseph Yeager (American, 20th Century). Unsigned, but was purchased with a collection of ...

Four women with puppets. 1947, paper, mixed media, 16.3x11 cm Adolfs Zardins (1890 08 II Riga, Latvia – 1967 07 II Jurmala, Latvia), painter. Only in 1990 his relatives give his art...

Signed indistinctly, lower right, and painted circa 1935. A strongly animated, vertically stacked figurative painting filled with compressed energy and an atmosphere of psychologic...

Artist: Ben Benn, Polish/American (1884 - 1983) Title: Boy with Doves Year: 1946 Medium: Oil on Canvas, signed and dated l.r. Size: 30 x 36 in. (76.2 x 91.44 cm) Benn Benn was a pio...

A father and son watch a World War II era air show as a man in military uniform looks on. Original promotional calendar illustration for Goodyear, published 1941 Medium: Oil on Can...

Edwin Dickinson (1891-1978) View Of Wellfleet, Massachusetts, 1942 Oil on canvas, 10 x 12 inches (25.4 x 30.5 cm) Framed dimensions: 15 1/4 x 17 1/4 in Signed in the wet, vertically ...

Dynamic landscape oil painting of Big Sur, California by Berkeley California artist Ellen Pearl Johnson (American, 1935-2019). An exception...

Firmato in basso a destra Bellissimo e luminoso paesaggio del porto francese di Concarneau Esposto in varie mostre Gallerie Mady Bonnard 1961 Gallerie Le Griffon 1963 Galleria Pirr...

An original oil on canvas painting by American artist James Koenig created in 1944.

Impressive early American modernist abstract still life oil painting. Framed. Oil on canvas board. Signed. Image size, 24H by 18L.

WWII Aircraft Factory Workers Industrial 20th Century American Scene WPA Modern Frederick Buchholz (1901-1983) WW2 Aircraft Factory 18 x 24 inches Oil ...

Antique impressionist still life painting by Irene ( I. Stry) Stry (1899/1904 - 1963). Oil on board, circa 1940. Signed. Image size, 24L x 20H.

"High School Dance" WPA Mid-20th Century Modern American Scene Social Realism Heusing (20th Century) "High School Dance" 27 x 32 inches Oil on canvas Signed and dated '47 Lower Righ...

'Paris Opera House' by Antoon Heinsbergen, 1941. California Artist, Chouinard Art Institute, Crocker Museum ----- Signed, verso, 'A Heinsbergen' for Antoon Heinsbergen (Dutch-American, 1894-1989), inscribed 'Painted in Paris from the top floor of the Grand Hotel Paris' and dated 1941. A panoramic view of early twentieth-century Paris with early automobiles, charabancs and pedestrians filling the boulevards converging on the Paris Opera beneath sunny blue skies. Painter and theatrical designer, Antoon Heinsbergen immigrated to Los Angeles as a small boy and first studied at the Chouinard Art School and the Otis Art Institute. He subsequently became sought after as a decorator of theaters and, working with a crew of 185, designed and painted wall and ceiling decorations...

Frederick Serger Genre: Post Impressionist Subject: Flowers, Poppies Medium: Oil Surface: Panel Frederick Serger (given name Frederick Bedrick Sinaberger) was born in 1889 to a family of Jewish manufacturers in the village of Ivancice near Brno Moravia, a province of Czechoslovakia. Showing artistic talent at a young age, he attended art schools in Brno, Czech, Vienna, Austria and Munich, Germany. During World War I, Serger joined the Austrian Army and served in the Balkans. Once his service ended, he traveled to Paris where he resumed his art training and eagerly joined the Ecole de Paris (School of Paris) artists’ movement. During this period, he was greatly influenced by the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Expressionist movements. While living in Paris, he met and married Helen Spitzer. Serger and his young wife moved from Paris to Scoczow, a city on the Polish-Czech border. They remained in Scoczow for 12 years and he continued to work as an artist, exhibiting in museums in Cracow and Warsaw, Poland. He also showed at the Paris Salon de Tuilleries and the Salon d’Automne. He was part of the generation of expat artists, mostly jewish known as the School of Paris. They created art in the styles of Post-Impressionism, Cubism and Fauvism. The group included artists Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani and Piet Mondrian. Associated French artists included Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes. Many École de Paris artists lived in the iconic La Ruche, a complex of studio apartments and other facilities in Montparnasse on the Left Bank, at 2 Passage Dantzig, built by a successful sculptor, Alfred Boucher, who wanted to develop a creative hub where struggling artists could live, work and interact. A significant subset, the Jewish artists, came to be known as the Jewish School of Paris or the School of Montparnasse. The core members were almost all Jews, included Emmanuel Mane-Katz, Abraham Mintchine...

Very well done and interesting vintage Italian impressionist painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed.

Tertiaries Colour Exercise Gouache 20 x 25 cm Provenance: The family of A. E. Halliwell This vibrant abstract composition explores the harmony of tertiary colours through interwov...

Metsälampi (Forest Pond) is a 1942 oil painting on panel by the Finnish artist Ragnar Ungern, depicting a forest pond with overhanging trees reflected in its still waters. Created in...

Signed Lower Right by Artist The Saturday Evening Post Cover, September 23, 1944 A proponent of simplicity as a virtue, Stevan Dohan...

Arthur Dove: 1880-1946. One of the most important early American Modernists and Abstract Expressionists. He has had auction results over $8,000,000 and that record was 2 weeks ago. A...

This stunning 1945 winter landscape gouache painting by acclaimed American artist Edgar Britton (1901–1982) beautifully captures the serene beauty of a snow-covered mountain road lin...

A captivating, Modern 1940s portrait painting of a young female ballet dancer by famed Chicago artist, Francis Chapin (Am. 1899-1965). A skilled and expressive studio portrait of a ...