Ben-Zion Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

We would like to thank Mrs. Ursula Verena Fischer Pace for suggesting the attribution to Donato Arsenio Mascagni. We were immediately seduced by the rich tonalities of this allegory...

Pen and ink, ink wash and pencil on paper, signed and dated (lower right), 38cm x 29cm (65cm x 55cm framed). This penetrating and wonderfully executed self-portrait, is all the mor...

Circle of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Venice 1727 – Madrid 1804) Hercules vanquishing a drakaina (half‑woman, half‑serpent) – interpreted either as Echidna or a personified Hydra c. ...

We would like to thank Juliette Parmentier-Courreau of the Custodia Foundation for her welcome and support during the consultation of Glomy’s Journal des Ouvrages. This spectacularly large "feuille de desseins ajustés" commissioned by François Boucher from Jean-Baptiste Glomy is emblematic of the painter's art and mastery of rocaille. It is also fully representative of the taste of this period in the field of decorative arts. The largest of these three drawings, placed at the bottom of the composition, is particularly interesting: dating from around 1756, it constitutes a modello (apparently unpublished) for the frontispiece of the "Catalogue des tableaux de Monsieur de Julienne"), preserved in the Morgan Library in New York. 1. François Boucher, the master of French rocaille The extraordinary career of Francois Boucher was unmatched by his contemporaries in versatility, consistency and output. For many, particularly the writers and collectors who led the revival of interest in the French rococo during the last century, his sensuous beauties and plump cupids represent the French eighteenth century at its most typical. His facility with the brush, even when betraying the occasional superficiality of his art, enabled him to master every aspect of painting – history and mythology, portraiture, landscape, ordinary life and, as part of larger compositions, even still life. He had been trained as an engraver, and the skills of a draftsman, which he imbued in the studio of Jean-Francois Cars (1661 – 1738), stood him in good stead throughout his career; his delightful drawings are one of the most sought-after aspects of his oeuvre. As a student of Francois Lemoyne (1688 - 1737), he mastered the art of composition. The four years he spent in Italy, from 1727-1731, educated him in the works of the masters, classics and history, that his modest upbringing had denied him. On his return to Paris in 1734, he gained full membership of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture with his splendid Rinaldo and Armida (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Although, throughout his career, he occasionally painted subjects taken from the Bible, and would always have considered himself first as a history painter, his own repertoire of heroines, seductresses, flirtatious peasant girls and erotic beauties was better suited to a lighter, more decorative subject matter. His mastery of technique and composition enabled him to move from large scale tapestry...

Marcel Georges Prud’homme (Paris, 1877 – ?, 1955) Panorama of Paris with the Institut de France and the Pont des Arts Ink and wash on paper Signed and dated lower right 18 x 26 cm ...

Watercolour and Chinese ink on paper, signed and dated (upper right), 10cm x 17cm (30cm x 38cm framed). George Barbier was one of the great French illustrators of the early 20th century. Born in Nantes, France on 16 October 1882, Barbier was 29 years old when he mounted his first exhibition in 1911 and was subsequently swept to the forefront of his profession with commissions to design theatre and ballet costumes...

Jacques-Laurent Agasse (Swiss, 1767-1849) Young Man Resting by the Roadside, 1819 Pen and ink and wash on paper, 5 1/4 x 6 1/2 inches Framed: 13 x 11 3/4 inches (approx.) Signed and ...

Faithful to the neo-classical taste, sculptor Antoine-Denis Chaudet presents us with a frieze of antique figures executed in gray wash over pencil strokes, which is likely inspired b...

Rudolf SCHLICHTER (1890-1955) Seated man ; head studies India ink on paper Signed "R. Schlichter" at the bottom right 59 x 46 cm Missing at the top l...

This masterly frontispiece study, executed with a very sure hand, testifies to the survival of the great Baroque taste in 18th century Venice. It could be one of the very last works by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini: the few lines that cross the papal arms evoke those of Benedict XIV, who became pope in 1740, one year before the artist's death. 1. Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini and the European influence of Venetian history painting in the 18th century Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini was born in Venice in 1675 and trained in the studio of the Milanese painter Paolo Pagani (1655 - 1716). Pagani, who had been living in Venice since 1667, took him to Moravia and Vienna from 1690 to 1696. After a stay in Rome from 1699 to 1701, Pellegrini married Angiola Carriera in 1704, the sister of the great pastelist Rosalba Carriera. From 1708 onwards, Pellegrini left Venice and began an extensive tour of Europe: he worked in England between 1708 and 1713, where he met great success, particularly at Kimbolton Castle and Castle Howard. He then worked in Germany and the Netherlands, then in Bohemia and Austria, before returning briefly to England in 1719. In 1720 he was in Paris where he decorated the ceilings of the Royal Bank for John Law...

This large sheet, delicately enhanced with blue ink wash, was created by Lodovico Cardi, known as Il Cigoli, the most prominent painter in Florence at the end of the 16th century. It...

Statue of Vishnu Garuda, Bali, 1904 Signed with initials Pencil and ink on paper, 21.4 x 21.3 cm Literature: Bruce W. Carpenter, W.O.J. Nieuwenkamp. First European Artist in Bali,...