John DePol

Some Garden Accessories

1979

Charles Quest, 'Still Life', 1947, wood engraving, edition 8. Signed, dated, and numbered '3/8' in pencil. Titled and annotated 'wood engraving' in the bottom left margin. A fine impression, on off-white wove paper, with full margins (1 to 2 inches), in excellent condition. Scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed. ABOUT THE ARTIST Charles Quest, painter, printmaker, and fine art instructor, worked in various mediums, including mosaic, stained glass, mural painting, and sculpture. Quest grew up in St. Louis, his talent evident as a teenager when he began copying the works of masters such as Michelangelo on his bedroom walls. He studied at the Washington University School of Fine Arts, where he later taught from 1944 to 1971. He traveled to Europe after his graduation in 1929 and studied at La Grande Chaumière and Academie Colarossi, Paris, continuing to draw inspiration from the works of the Old Masters. After returning to St. Louis, Quest received several commissions to paint murals in public buildings, schools, and churches, including one from Joseph Cardinal Ritter, to paint a replica of Velasquez's Crucifixion over the main altar of the Old Cathedral in St. Louis. Quest soon became interested in the woodcut medium, which he learned through his study of J. J. Lankes' A Woodcut Manual (1932) and Paul Landacre's articles in American Artist magazine ‘since no artists in St. Louis were working in wood’ at that time. Quest also revealed that for him, wood cutting and engraving were ‘more enjoyable than any other means of expression.’ In the late 1940s, his graphic works began attracting critical attention—several of his woodcuts won prizes and were acquired by major American and European museums. His wood engraving entitled ‘Lovers’ was included in the American Federation of Art's traveling print exhibition in 1947. Two years later, Quest's two prize-winning prints, ‘Still Life with Grindstone’ and ‘Break Forth into Singing’, were exhibited in major American museums in a traveling show organized by the Philadelphia Print Club. His work was included in the Chicago Art Institute's exhibition, ‘Woodcut Through Six Centuries’, and the print ‘Still Life with Vise’ was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1951 he was invited by artist-Curator Jacob Kainen to exhibit thirty wood engravings and color woodcuts in a one-person show at the Smithsonian's National Museum (now known as the American History Museum). Kainen's press release praised the ‘technical refinement’ of Quest's work: ‘He obtains a great variety of textural effects through the use of the graver, and these dense or transparent grays are set off against whites or blacks to achieve sparkling results. His work has the handsome qualities characteristic of the craftsman and designer.’ At the time of the Smithsonian exhibition, Quest's work was represented by three New York galleries in addition to one in his home town. He had won 38 prizes, and his prints were in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Chicago Art Institute, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In cooperation with the Art in Embassies program, his color woodcuts were displayed at the American Embassy in Paris in 1951. Recognition at home came in 1955 with his first solo exhibition in St. Louis. Press coverage of the show heralded the ‘growth of graphic arts toward rivaling painting and sculpture as a major independent medium’. An exhibition of his prints at the Bethesda Art Gallery in 1983 attracted Curator Emeritus Joseph A. Haller, S.J., who began purchasing his work for Georgetown University's collection. In 1990 Georgetown University Library's Special Collections Division was the recipient of a large body of Quest's work, including prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, stained glass, and his archive of correspondence and professional memorabilia. These extensive holdings, including some 260 of his fine prints, provide a rich opportunity for further study and appreciation of this versatile and not-to-be-forgotten mid-Western American artist...

Margo Humphrey, 'The Garden (Adam and Eve)', reductive color woodcut, 1989. Signed, dated, and annotated 'A/P' in pencil. Signed and dated in the image, lower right. A fine, richly-inked, artist's proof impression, with fresh, vivid colors, on BFK Rives, heavy, off-white wove paper; the full sheet with margins (1 to 1 3/8 inches), in excellent condition. Archivally sleeved, unmatted. Scarce. Image size 27 1/4 x 39 1/8 inches (692 x 994 mm); sheet size 29 1/2 x 42 inches (749 x 1,067 mm). ABOUT THIS WORK "Humphrey continued to reinterpret stories from the Bible with African American figures. In 1989 she published the woodcut print 'The Garden' at Magnolia Editions in Oakland, CA. For this rare foray into relief printmaking, she employed the reductive method, which uses only one block that is successively carved for each color segment, reducing the block with each cutting. Technically challenging, this lush and elaborate print is a testament to Humphrey’s skills as a printmaker. A youthful Adam and Eve are depicted in a luxuriant tropical landscape. Here, Humphrey chooses not to include the traditional symbols of humanity’s downfall but instead portrays them as being protected by angels in an atmosphere of idyllic bounty. ...Although Humphrey challenges traditional representation of Christian themes, her images are not iconoclastic but present a broader, more inclusive engagement with religious spirituality." — Adrienne L. Childs, 'Margo Humphrey, The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art: Volume VII,' Pomegranate Communications, Inc., 2009, page 71. ABOUT THE ARTIST American printmaker, illustrator, and art teacher Margo Humphrey was born in Oakland, California, in 1942. She earned a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from the California College of Arts and Crafts and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking from Stanford University. Humphrey began teaching in 1973 at the University of California Santa Cruz and has since taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has also taught at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji; Yaba Technological Institute of Fine Art, Ekoi Island, Nigeria; the University of Benin in Benin City, Nigeria; the Margaret Trowell School of Fine Art in Kampala, Uganda, and the Fine Art School of the National Gallery of Art, Harare, Zimbabwe. In 1989, she was appointed Department Head of Printmaking at the University of Maryland in College Park. Humphrey has worked in lithography, monoprint, and woodcut with significant printmaking ateliers, including the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, the Bob Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, and the Tamarind Institute in New Mexico. She was one of the earliest African-American woman artists to distinguish herself as a lithographer in a highly technical, male-dominated profession and was the first to have her prints published by Tamarind in 1974. Humphrey’s imagery combines historical perspective, autobiography, and fantasy to illuminate her experience as an African American woman. Bold, saturated color, animated figures, and syncopated rhythmic arrangements are hallmarks of Humphrey's oeuvre. Though Humphrey labels her distinctive style "sophisticated naive," the narrative complexity and technical skill of her works attest to her artistic virtuosity. Joyful, expressive, and at times humorous, her works offer engaging commentary on the presumptions of American culture and myth while embracing her personal vision of authenticity and spirituality. She developed her 1987 work The Last Bar-B-Que, a vividly colored transformation of the Last Supper, following a three-year period during which she examined portrayals of the iconic subject by artists from Pietro Lorenzetti to Emil Nolde. Her narrative work The Garden, a monumentally scaled reductive woodcut, is a further example of an archetypal subject—Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden—debunked and rendered with fresh, life-affirming vibrancy. Since her first solo exhibition in 1965, Humphrey’s works have been exhibited internationally. They are held in major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Hampton University Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, and the National Gallery of Modern Art, Lagos. In 1996, she was invited to be part of the World Printmaking Survey at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2011, Hampton University Museum mounted a 45-year retrospective of Humphrey’s work Her Story: Margo Humphrey Lithographs and Works on Paper, jointly curated by Robert E. Steele, executive director of the David Driskell...

John DePol, 'Floating Crap Game, chiaroscuro wood engraving, 1958, edition 145. Signed, titled, numbered 'Ed. 145' and dated '3/1958'. Signed in the block, lower right. A fine, rich ...

Clinton Adams, 'September Still Life', lithograph, 1956, edition 20. A superb impression, on cream wove paper, with full margins (1 1/2 to 3 1/8 inches);...

Backyard II Lithograph, 1972 Signed lower right Signed lower right Annotated: Printer's Proof Reference: Karl Lunde 58 An impression is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chic...

Garden is an original Vintage Offset Print on ivory-colored paper, realized by Franco Gentilini (Italian Painter, 1909-1981) in the late 20th Century. The state of preservation of t...

Georges LE MEILLEUR (1861-1945) Garden with Antic Statues, 1920 Original woodcut Handsigned in pencil Numbered /160 On vellum 32.5 x 25.5 cm (c. 13 x 10 in) Bears the blind stamp of...

Peter Milton created this etching and engraving entitled “GARDEN WITH HENRY” in 1993. It is signed, titled, dated, and inscribed “153/250” in pencil under the image. The printed image size is 9.5 x 12 inches and the paper size is 15.5 x 18 inches. The inspiration for this piece came from the Henry James novella “The Aspern Papers” and clearly depicts the Venetian setting. The American-British author Henry James (1843-1916) wrote “The Aspern Papers” first published in 1888. Peter Milton was born in Pennsylvania in 1930. He studied for two years at the Virginia Military Institute...