Vanessa Stafford Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Whitehall Building, July 1939 - Harbor Seascape with Tugboat in Watercolor Detailed harbor landscape by Ernest Clegg (British, 1876-1954). The Whitehall Building towers over the sce...

Title: Atmospheric French City Square With Figures Archway And Trees Watercolor Artist: Pierre Neveu (French b.1929) Medium: Watercolour and Gouache on artists paper, unframed Size (...

Detailed European Landscape in Watercolor and Gouache on Paper This finely detailed watercolor painting captures a serene countryside setting with an old stone church, a rustic hous...

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...

Outsider Folk Art American Mid-Century Naive WW2 Self Taught WPA Depression Era "Victory for Now" Ralph Fasanella (1914-_1997) "Victory and After,” gouache on paper. Signed, titled...

Artist: Reginald Marsh, American (1898 - 1954) Title: The "Cannonball" Year: 1936 Medium: Watercolor on Paper, signed, titled, and dated l.r. Size: 16.5 in. x 22.5 in. (41.91 cm x 57...

Venice, Italy, mid century urban view 0f daily life in this iconic city by Henri Levasseur. The painting is signed and dated bottom right and titled bottom left. Presented in a fine ...

David Rathman is known for his sensitively rendered paintings of stereotypically male motifs from American history and contemporary culture. He was the recipient of a Bush Foundatio...

Clara Montalba (British, 1842-1929) Venetian Canal Scene, 1919 Watercolor on paper 10 x 15 1/2 in. Framed: 16 5/8 x 21 5/8 x 1 1/4 in. Signed and dated lower right: Clara Montalba 19...

"Showers Today" San Francisco's Chinatown on an Overcast Day Original Watercolor A two sided watercolor on Arches paper by San Francisco and Maryland artist Harolod Gretzner (America...

The Camp Fire Frank Duffield (British, 1908-1982) signed original watercolor painting on board, unframed size: 10.75 x 15 inches co...

The Alpine Chalets Frank Duffield (British, 1908-1982) signed original watercolor painting on thick artist paper, unframed size: 10...