Norah Neilson Gray

Exotic - Scottish 1920 s exhibited Glasgow Girl art portrait oil painting

Circa 1923

American artist Henry R Rittenberg painted this lovely 1920's Art Deco portrait oil painting. The painting is a standing half length portrait of a lady in a black coat with a white fur collar over a red dress and long beads. She has an elegant 1920's short bob hair style and a confident expression. The strong brushwork and range of tones within one colour are superb. A really striking Art Deco portrait oil painting. Signed upper left. Provenance. Dorset estate. Condition. Oil on canvas, 30 inches by 25 inches and in good condition. Frame. Housed in a fine James Bourlet panel silvered frame, 40 inches by 35 inches and in good condition. Henry R Rittenberg (1879-1969) was born in Libau, Latvia and later immigrated to the United States. He studied art at the Bavarian Academy in Germany, and by 1906, was in Philadelphia, where he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Rittenberg painted landscapes and still lifes, yet his forte was portraiture. The artist was commissioned to paint a number of portraits of American dignitaries including Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings and a group portrait of President Harry S...

This lovely Scottish Edwardian portrait oil painting is by noted artist William Alexander Cuthbertson. It was painted in 1909 before Cuthbertson left Scotland on a travel scholarship...

Exquisite antique portrait painting of a young fashionable woman. Framed. Oil on canvas. Signed. Image size, 31H by 24L.

Bohemian woman Budapest, Hungary 1925 by Bertha De Hellebranth. Fabulous period painting brings to life the bohemian intelligentsia of Europe in the 1920's. I believe the painting is of the artists sister Elena Maria De Hellebranth. Both sisters were accomplished artist and worked and exhibited together. See the photo of the sisters Elena on the left and Bertha on the right. Oil on canvas. In a period frame. Signed lower right. Inscribed on reverse. Provenance: label from Newman Galleries Philadelphia. BIOGRAPHY ; Bertha de Hellebranth and her sister Elena were born into a cultured upper-class family in Budapest, Bertha in 1899, Elena in 1897. Their father was a lawyer and their mother a student of Franz Liszt's last living pupil. Both sisters showed artistic potential early, beginning to paint at four or five years of age. Their parents encouraged them, and had the means to send them to the best art schools of the time. They studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Budapest, at the Académie Julian and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, and painted portraits of European nobility. As Patricia Fazekas points out, "Growing up in a family of privilege, they seemed to have unusual access to many illustrious people." So we should not be surprised to find among their subjects members of high society, such as Count Andrássy Gyula, the Russian-born Princess Baby Galitzine, and Admiral Horthy Miklós, the Regent. Later on, their subjects included American heiress Gladys Vanderbilt (Countess László Széchenyi), President Theodore Roosevelt's granddaughter Paulina Longworth and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.Often, the sisters would paint the same subject at the same time, offering the sitter a choice of portraits. Most often, the sitter wanted both renditions.While Elena concentrated on working in oil and watercolor, Bertha used gouache and oil to achieve her effects. Elena gave lectures and workshops, was a writer and also wrote popular and ecclesiastical music, while Bertha also went in for sculpture and handicrafts.From the mid-thirties until World War II, Bertha and Elena divided their time between their home in Budapest and a home on the ocean at Ventnor, NJ. In 1925, they showed their work at the Nemzeti Szalon in Budapest, and in 1926, they had a joint exhibition of their portraits in the US. Both exhibited their work at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and most major museums and galleries in the US. Bertha also had exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Both Bertha and Elena were Fellows of the Royal Society of Art (London), and garnered numerous prizes. Bertha was awarded First Prize by the National Academy of the American Water Color Society one year, and the Grand Prize of the Audubon Society. She was one of the founders of the now defunct World League of Hungarian Artists Abroad (Külföldi Magyar Képz?m?vészek Világszövetsége), and received a Gold Medal from the Cleveland Árpád Akadémia in 1963. (Elena also received the Akadémia's gold medal in 1965.) Their work is found in museums and galleries too numerous to mention.The de Hellebranth sisters were devout Catholics, and this is evident in their many portraits of clerics...