William Heer

Fruit Flowers, Still Life

1921

Bright, fun, oil on board still life by WPA painter J. William Hallquist. Signed lower right.

Well painted 1919 American School oil on board. Signed and dated lower right. Framed in a period frame. From an estate in Gloucester MA.

Beautifully painted oil on canvas still life with vase of flowers and a glass bowl of fruit. In the background is a painting of a young woman. Artist monogram lower right. The mon...

This artwork "Still Life Flowers in a Vase" c.1960 is an oil painting on canvas by noted California artist John William Orth, 1889-1976. It is signed at the lower right corner by the artist. The canvas size is 36 x 30 inches, framed size is 46.5 x 40.5 inches. Custom framed in a wooden gold with brown patina frame, with fabric and gold liner. It is in excellent condition. About the artist: John W. Orth was born in Bavaria in 1889. He sold his first painting, a water color, when he was 13. At age 15 studied under a scholarship at Nuremberg's College of Fine Arts. Three years later, again on a scholarship, he attended Munich's Academy of Fine Arts. From there he went on to study at the Art Academy Julien in Paris and then traveled throughout Europe, studying work by the Old Masters. For Nuremberg's Albrecht Durer Museum, he was commissioned to reproduce a number of Durer's paintings, and representatives of The Rhineland's Barmen Museum purchased his painting of The Prodigal Son. In 1922, Louis Mayer, an accomplished artist himself, purchased Orth's The Prophet from among thousands of paintings displayed at Munich's Glas Palast. He declared Orth's painting "the work of a genius," and for three years The Prophet was hung, by invitation, in the Brooklyn Art Museum. Already an established artist at age 34, Orth left his troubled country in 1923 to escape certain persecution for his outspoken liberal views on race, religion and politics. He came to America to start anew. Here, he felt certain, his restless spirit could continue to grow, his career to flourish in an environment of freedom, which encouraged individual expression and unrestrained thought. In the United States, John Orth did portraits of notables including Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Marian Anderson...