Back to Front Go Figure

Back to Front Go Figure

painted on April 17, 2024, 12" x 9" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$400

Contemplating Spring

Contemplating Spring

painted on April 15, 2024, 10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed
$300

Outside Nude Color Full

Outside Nude Color Full

painted on April 8, 2024, 5" x 7" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$150.

Beholding Yellow Tulips

Beholding Yellow Tulips

potted on my deck railing, growing, from the grocery store set on my home railing in Shapleigh, Maine on March 18, 2024, painted March 31, 2024, 14" x 11" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$500

Vintage Brit Figure Models Art

Then and Now
Vintage Brit Figure Models
Art Guide from a Book

1
The Bookstore Window
Views of London - Charing Cross Road
Wolfgang Suschitzky (1912-2016) Austrian
Gelatin silver prints, 19" x 20" (w x h), 1935 / 1989

Sothebys, London 2018 auction sold

Wolfgang Suschitzky, B.S.C. (British Society of Cinematographers) (1912-2016), was an Austrian-born British documentary photographer, as well as a cinematographer known for his work on Mike Hodges' 1971 film, Get Carter.

This photo is from his book:
Charing Cross Road in the Thirties
Photographs by Wolf Suschitzky
The Photo Library 9
Dirk Nishen Publishing, London, UK, 1989

From the "introduction" and various sources:
"Charing Cross Road in the 1930s was far from being a respectable street. It was a nighttime pleasure street, a promiscuous mix of activities. Foyles was the bookstore, a fabled place, "the largest bookstore in the world," all five floors. Also on Charing Cross Road in the 1930s was Zwemmer's, the first serious art booksellers in England, plus the second-hand books shops, the staple of the Charing Cross trade. Pornography was a feature of the Charring Cross trade, the goods sometimes secreted in underground showrooms. Marks, Poole's and Josephs made a specialty of art nudes."
        A brass plaque on the stone pilaster facing Charing Cross Road commemorates the former bookshop, Foyles, and Helen Hanff's charming classic long-distance love affair novel, has the bookstore as a central character in the noted book (1970) and film (1987), starring Ann Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins, 84 Charring Cross Road. In the Harry Potter books, the Leaky Cauldron pub is on Charing Cross Road. Author J.K. Rowling chose this road because "it is famous for its bookshops, both modern and antiquarian. This is why I wanted it to be the place where those in the know go to enter a different world."

Looking at the book covers on display in
the windows led to this book:

2
Studies of the Human Figure
with Some Notes on Drawing and Anatomy
G.M, Ellwood and F. R. Yerbury
B. T. Batsford Ltd., London, 1919

3
This copy was acquisitioned by the
Boston Medical Library, January 1927
See and flip though
Studies of the Human Figure online HERE

I painted two quick sketches from the book's suggested plates.

4

XLVI, Model No. 5, "Waking," a beautiful recumbent pose, with useful detail in the foreshortening of the right arm and thighs, and the finely modelled left arm and shoulder. A painter's or moddler's subject, and an interesting anatomical study.

5
XLVI (Plate 66), Model No. 5
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for
light fastness and permanence, and Uniball
waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs.
Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white
watercolor paper,
framed,
$150

6

XXXVIII, Model No. 1, A wonderful pose expressive of hope and vitality. The foreshortening is extremely well caught, and an anatomical rendering of the pose is an interesting task.

7
XXXVIII (Plate 39), Model No. 1
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for
light fastness and permanence, and Uniball
waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs.
Fabriano Artistico cold press rough
100% cotton extra white
watercolor paper,
framed,
$150.

The Art of Tulip Conversation

The Art of Conversation

between yellow tulips, potted, from the grocery store set on my home railing in Shapleigh, Maine on March 18, 2024, painted March 31, 2024, 14" x 11" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$500

Pink Tulip Five & and One Nestled

Pink Tulip Five & and One Nestled

from the grocery store in a pot in my Shapleigh, Maine yard on March 24, 2024 painted on March 31, 2024, 10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$300

Tulip to the Sun

Tulip to the Sun

from the grocery store in a pot in my Shapleigh, Maine yard on March 24, 2024, painted on Mar 29, 2024, 5" x 7" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$150

A Splash of Pink Tulips

A Splash of Pink Tulips

painted on April 2, 2024, 12" x 9" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$300

Matisse and the Girl with Tulips

Matisse and the Girl with Tulips
They're pink tulips...

1
Girl with Tulips
Henri Matisse (1869-1954)) French
Oil on canvas, 29" x 36" (w x h), 1910
Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia

Source State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia notes edited:
The interaction between the flowers and the human figure forms the central theme. The strong stems of the tulips forcing themselves upwards in an expression of the coming spring, the thick green color of the sharp leaves, everything carries within it the energy of growth. Nature and human together form a harmonious whole.
        Jeanne Vaderin, the model for this painting, was in convalescence at Issey-les-Moulineaux, where Matisse rented a house in 1910. Matisse and his wife affectionately called her Jeannette. In this painting there is something gentle and melancholy, something fragile and refined in the face and slightly asymmetrical figure of Jeanette. "My models, the figures of people, are never static elements in an interior. They are the main theme of my work," wrote Matisse in 1908, two years previous to this painting. Jeannette was also his model for a number of other works, including a series of bronze heads.

2
Girl with Tulips
Henri Matisse (1869-1954)) French
Charcoal on paper, 23" x 29" (w x h), 1910
MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York

3
Jeannette (I) - frontal
Henri Matisse (1869-1954) French
Bronze, 13" x 9" x 10"
1910 winter to spring at Issy-les-Moulineaux

4
Jeannette (I) - profile
Henri Matisse (1869-1954)) French
Bronze, 13" x 9" x 10"
1910 winter to spring at Issy-les-Moulineaux

Source" MOMA notes edited:
In the process of creating five busts of Jeanne Vaderin, affectionately known to Matisse and his wife as Jeannette, between 1910 and 1916, Matisse radically reconfigured traditional representation of the human face. Jeannette I and II were created directly from the model, which is evident in their characteristic, hawk-like profiles.
        These two works then served as templates for Jeannette III, IV, and V. As he progressed with the series, Matisse dramatically abstracted his subject, organizing the head into increasingly simplified chunks. In 1908 he'd explained that his goal in portraiture was not to achieve visual precision but rather to reveal the "essential qualities" of his sitters, qualities, he felt, that physical imitation could not capture.

5
Jeannette (IV) -profile
Henri Matisse (1869-1954)) French
Bronze, 24" x 11" x 11"
September 1910 or February to
mid-July 1911 at Issy-les-Moulineaux

April Fools Tulip

April Fools Tulip

painted appropriately on April 1, 2024, 5" x 7" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$150

Tulip Family Three

A Twelve Minute Painting

Tulip Family Three

Timed from start to finish, 12 minutes, of potted tulips from my grocery store, outside at home in Shapleigh, Maine on March 18, 2024, painted March 22, 2024, 7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$150

Tulip Intimacy

Tulip Intimacy

blooming in a pot from the grocery store set on my home railing in Shapleigh, Maine on March 18, 2024, painted March 21, 2024, 12" x 9" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$400

Tulips Going Up

Tulips Going Up

live and growing, from the grocery store, set on my home railing in Shapleigh, Maine on March 18, 2024, painted March 20, 2024, 12" x 9" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$400

Art of Yellow Tulips Part I of II

The Art of Yellow Tulips
Part I of II

A blooming collection as seen and painted by artists
from various centuries, various countries,
various backgrounds and both genders.

1
Parrot Tulips and Leaves Design
Arthur Ewart Brown (1906-1981) British, Scottish
Gouache on off-white laid paper, 12" x 19"(w x h), 1933
Gift of Dr. Denman Waldo Ross, Cambridge, MA, 1934,
who was Director of the MFA Boston for 33 years.
The Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Source various online:
Arthur Ewart Brown was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1906 and completed his journey through life in London, England in 1981. He painted botanical art, four originals in the collections of the Harvard Art Museums.

2
Illumination
Heidi Woodhead, Australian
Oil on canvas, 48" x 48" (w x h), 2023
$6,000 AUD / $3,900 USD, sold, private collection
Handmark Gallery, Hobart, Australia

Source various, Handmark, Artist website, and more:
Heidi Woodhead, a photo-realist oil painter, trained and worked as a forensic crime scene examiner with the Tasmanian Police Force for 11 years. She gained an eye for detail, and an understanding of the shades of life and the fleeting nature of beauty, themes she explores in her art. "I return to floral and botanical themes because I see them as a metaphor for life: exquisite, but often imperfect beauty that is impermanent, transient, tenuous. I strive to capture that beauty before it decays, and to find the glimmer of light in the darkness." Heidi is a self-taught artist, exhibiting since 1998. She lives in South Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

3
Yellow Tulips
Alex Katz (1927- ) American
Silkscreen, Limited Edition of 50, 77" x 48" (w x h), 2014

Source Wiki edited:
Alex Katz's 50 edition screenprint was made in 2014. It's based on his Tulips 4, 16" x 10" (w x h), his huge oil painting painted by him when he was 86 years-old. It's in the collection of MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. It's huge size is typical of Alex Katz. He is well known for his large paintings, whose bold simplicity and heightened colors are considered as precursors to Pop Art. Since 1951, his work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally.

4
Still Life of Tulips
Poul Nielsen (1920-1998) Danish
Oil on canvas, 28" x 23" (w x h), 1954
$6,000, Charish, San Francisco

Source Charish edited:
Poul Nielsen first studied painting at the Freiberg Technical School in Germany. After WWII he studied at the Danish Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen. He subsequently painted and studied throughout Europe and, later, as his palette continued to lighten, spent more time in Egypt and Greece. Nielsen exhibited widely with success and was the recipient of many medals, prizes and juried awards. His works are held in private and public collections including the Oddsherreds Art Museum, Asnae, Denmark.

5
Yellow Tulips in a Tall Vase
Gary Bukovnik (1947- ) American
Watercolor on paper, 22" x 30" (w x h), 2018
Private collection

Source artist website and Steven Scott Gallery edited:
Born and educated in Cleveland, Gary Bukovnik has lived in San Francisco for more the last thirty ply years. Primarily using watercolor, monotype, and lithograph, he creates floral and culinary images. Bukovnik's watercolors and monotypes are the subject of a book by Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1990. The New York Metropolitan Opera commissioned him to create a poster commemorating their 1990-91 season. In the early 2000s he was Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome was an artist-in-residence at the Michigan Institute of Arts in Kalamazoo in 2010.
        Bukovnik's work is in public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Brooklyn Museum; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the Library of Congress; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
        Solo exhibitions of Bukovnik's work have been mounted by the Brooklyn Museum, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario, the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, and the Gallery at Lincoln Center, New York, among others.

6
Tulips (Flower Study)
Myra Butterworth (1899-2002) American
Watercolor with graphite on wove paper, 9" x12" (w x h), 1933
The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Source various edited (listed in at the National Gallery as no know biography for artists in the collection):
Myra Butterworth Newswanger (1899-2002) of Philadelphia was an accomplished artist, her style compared to Mary Cassatt. Her art is in collections of the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, and the national Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. She was married to Vernon Kiehl Newswanger (1901- 1980) from Fairfield, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, known for Amish theme painting. Although the Newswangers' talent took them around the world, they returned to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania where their family lived since the 1700's. Their son, Christian (Xtian) Newswanger, who turned down scholarships to Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania to study art with his father, a professor at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, later, received a prestigious Fulbright scholarship to study at the National Art Academy in Dusseldorf, Germany.

7
Yellow Tulips
Le Pho (1907-2001) Vietnamese
Oil on canvas, 29" x 21" (w x h), 1998 in Paris
Sotheby's 2021 Hong Kong auction
sold $945,000 HKD / $121,000 USD

Source: Wiki edited:
Le Pho (1907-2001) was a Vietnamese painter. From 1925 until 1930, Le Pho studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Hanoi. He earned a scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied for the next two years under the instruction of Victor Tardieu, a friend and companion of Henri Matisse. Upon returning to Vietnam he taught at the Ecole Superieure des Beaux Arts de l'Indochine in Hanoi.
        In 1937 he gave up his professorship to return to Paris as a part of the International Exposition in Paris as both a delegate and a member of the exposition's jury. In 1938, he had his first one-man show in Paris, a show which marked the beginning of his successful artistic career in Europe. He would go on to show his art across France in Paris, Nice, Lyon, and Rouen, as well as in Morocco, Brussels in Europe, and in New York.

8
Tulips
Victoria Huntley (1900-1971) American
Color lithograph, 10" x 13" (w x h), 1931
Printed by George C. Miller (American, 1894-1965)

Source Wiki edited:
Victoria Ebbels Hutson Huntley (1900-1971) was an American artist, and printmaker. She grew up in New York City, and studied at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art and the Art Students League of New York. She was awarded First Prize in Lithography in the International Graphic Art Show at the Chicago Art Institute. In 1933 her lithograph, Koppers Coke, was awarded First Prize in Lithography in the National Exhibition of the Philadelphia Print Club.
        She taught at the Birch Wathen Lenox School, a college prep school in Manhattan, from 1934 to 1942. Later in the 1940s she was Resident Artist at the Pomfret School college prep school in Connecticut. In 1939, she painted a mural, The Packet Sails from Greenwich, at the post office in Greenwich, Connecticut, and another, Fiddler's Green, in Springville, New York as part of the Treasury Section of Fine Arts.
        Her papers are held at the Archives of American Art. In 1942 she was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician. Her work is represented in the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Chicago Art Institute, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum.

Art of Yellow Tulips Part II of II

The Art of Yellow Tulips
Part II

A blooming collection as seen and painted by artists
from various centuries, various countries,
various backgrounds and both genders.

9
Yellow Tulips in a Ceramic Jug
Catharine Constance Cooper (1868-1960) British
Oil on canvas, 24" x 18" (w x h)
Bushey Museum and Art Gallery, Bushey, Hertfordshire, England

Source various online:
Catharine Constance Cooper (1868-1960) was a British artist known for her still life and trompe l'oeil paintings.

10
Tulips - Yellow #3
Mary Koga (1920-2001) American
Chromogenic print, 14" x 9" (w x h), 1984
The Art institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Source Wiki:
Mary Koga, born in Sacramento, California in 1920, was an avid photographer since she was a child. However, she concentrated on social work and received a BA in 1942 from the University of California at Berkeley and a Master's degree in 1947 from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.
        During World War II she was incarcerated in the internment camp at Tule Lake for a year because of her Japanese ethnicity. After working in social work from 1947 to 1969, eventually teaching as an Assistant Professor for Field Work at the University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration, 1960-1969, Koga concentrated on photography. She studied at the IIT Institute of Design and received a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1973. She went on to teach photography at Columbia College Chicago for seven years.
        The Floral Forms series was begun in 1972 and went on into the 1990s. Done in both color as well as black and white, the images are delicate close-ups of mostly single flower heads, artfully arranged in the studio with tightly controlled lighting. On occasion, she over exposed and used multiple exposure to emphasize the structure and/or color.

11
Tulip
Emile Galle (1846-1904) French
Pencil and watercolor, 21" x 17" (w x h), circa 1863
Musee d'Orsay, Paris France

Source Wiki:
Emile Galle (1846-1904), born and died in Nancy, France, was a French artist and designer who worked in glass. He's considered to be one of the major innovators in the French Art Nouveau movement. He was noted for his designs of Art Nouveau glass art and Art Nouveau furniture, and was a founder of the Ecole de Nancy or Nancy School, a movement of design in the city of Nancy, France.
        At 16-years-old he went to work for the family business as an assistant to his father, making floral designs and emblems for both earthenware and glass. In his spare time he became an accomplished botanist, studying with the director of the Botanical Gardens of Nancy and author of the leading textbooks on French flora. Emile collected plants from the region and from as far away as Italy and Switzerland. He also took courses in painting and drawing, and made numerous drawings of plants, flowers, animals and insects, which became the subjects for decoration.
        When he took over the family glass business, by 1889 he had over three hundred employees. His own office and studio was in the center of the complex. He trained the designers himself, and sent them watercolors of floral designs he made in the gardens of his residence. Galle ordered his designers to use only real flowers and plants as their models, though they could take some liberties in the final design. He wrote in 1889, "It is necessary to have a pronounced bias in favor of models taken from flora and fauna, while giving them free expression."

12
Tulipes / Tulips
Louis Boitte (1830-1906) French
Watercolor on paper, 9" x 16" (w x h), 1860
Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France
Donated by Alice Boitte, 1959

Source various:
French architect Louis Francois Philippe Boitte known as Louis Boitte (1830-1906) was the chief architect of the Palais de Fontainebleau. His wife, Zelia Lenoir, was a painter. He is also known for his drawings made in Italy, Greece and Turkey, professional visions of architects of that time. In close collaboration with Albert Lenoir , he also designed the plans for the cenotaph of General de Lamoriciere erected in 1869 in the cathedral of Nantes , a monument with which the sculptor Paul Dubois was associated. In 1959 his family bequeathed to the National Museum of the Chateau de Fontainebleau an important collection of numerous drawings and projects, which was transferred in 1986 to the Musee d'Orsay.

13
Tulips
Harry Sternberg (1904-2001) American
Color screenprint, 9" x 17" (w x h), 1937
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Source: Wiki edited:
Harry Sternberg (1904-2001), was an American painter, printmaker and educator. In 1931, his work was exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art for the first time. He was appointed in 1933 to the staff of the Art Students League of New York where he would remain an instructor for the next 35 years. Sternberg was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1936, and spent the year studying the conditions of workers in coal mines and steel mills. His drawings, etchings and paintings depicting life in industrial America influenced his subsequent post office mural designs. In 1966, he retired from the Art Students League of New York and the Sternbergs moved to Escondido, California, where he established a studio and continued to work as an artist and an educator for 35 more years. Between 1969 and 1978, he participated in The Orme School Fine Arts Festival, known as the dean of the festival, exposing high school students to the work and instruction of professional artists.
        He died in Escondido, California, in 2001 at 97 years-old. In 2000, his life and work were celebrated by a major retrospective exhibition: No Sun Without Shadow: The Art of Harry Sternberg at the Museum-California Center for the Arts, Escondido, California. He was the author of three art books, Composition: The Anatomy of Picture Making, Pitman, 1958, now in print by Dover, Woodcut, Pitman, 1962, and Silk Screen Color Printing, McGraw-Hill Books, 1942. In 1990 he published a collection of prints: Sternberg: A Life in Woodcuts, one of which depicts his painting of the noted Lakeview post office mural.

14
Untitled (Yellow Tulips and Lilacs)
Alfred Hesse (1904-1988), German
Oil on cardboard, 39" x 27" ( w x h), circa 1920s-1930s
The Arts Collection of Dresden, Germany

Source various edited:
Born in 1904, Alfred Hesse was predominantly influenced by the 1920s, a time of recovery and introspection after the First World War. The Bauhaus was founded in 1919. Surrealism was the predominant expressive mode of the 1920s, and was aided by the liberalism of Germany's Weimar Republic, which was an environment that allowed for remarkable creative flowering.
        Since 2002 The Arts Collection of Dresden, Germany has the largest holdings of Alfred Hesse's works in a public collection, almost 500 works including paintings, watercolors, pencil, pen and ink drawings and mural designs. His close home plays an important role in his work; among the watercolors and occasionally other works on paper, there are numerous scenes from the Elbe Valley, Saxon Switzerland and the Eastern Ore Mountains. Occasionally, he also painted still lifes like this one.

15
Tulips
William House (1928-2015) American
Oil on canvas, 46" x 35" (w x h), circa 1959
David B. Werbe Memorial Purchase Prize,
Annual Exhibition for Michigan Artists, 1959
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan

Source Eskywell edited:
Frederick William "Bill" House (1928-2015) was a lifetime Detroit area resident, spending the last forty five years of his life in Grosse Pointe. It was in a Lincoln Park grade school where his teacher, Mrs. Kute, recognized his artistic talent. By chance Mrs. Kute also taught Bill in high school where she encouraged his artistic endeavors and spoke to his parents about his skills.
        Bill mastered the clarinet and saxophone. It was those skills that served him well, playing in the Artie Shaw U.S. Navy band after World War II. He was a fine arts major at the Detroit Society of the Arts Crafts,(now Detroit's College for Creative Studies, graduating in 1952. He worked as an illustrator and taught at his alma mater, finishing as Professor Emeritus. Throughout his professional working life, he amassed a body of work, a clear, direct, representational style has resonated well with art buyers.

16
Tulip
Donn Russell (1929-2018) American
Silkscreen, artist's proof, 7" x 19" (w x h), circa 1980s
$195 USD

Source various online:
Born in Boston in an artistic family, Donn Russell attended the Boston Museum School, then Pratt Institute, the School of Visual Design and the Art Students League in New York City. His first public acclaim came winning a top award at a National Academy of Design Annual, followed by success at the Hartford (CT) Atheneum, Silvermine Artists, the New Museum, Audubon Artists, and others. In 1979 he set up his print gallery on Old South Wharf, Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, his summer base. He also had a studio in Greenwich Village, New York City. His work has been exhibited solo and in group gallery and museum shows in the US and abroad, has been featured in art and architecture publications, and as illustrations in the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Time, Life and Fortune.

Last Snow Study

Last Snow Study

the view looking south from my home in Shapleigh, Maine on Mar 11, 2024, 14" x 11" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$500

Last Snow for Four Foreseeing Spring

Last Snow for Four Foreseeing Spring

the abstracted view looking south from my home in Shapleigh, Maine on Mar 12, 2024, 17" x 13.5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$800

See my 2017 abstracted view of this scene HERE. 

Last Sliver of Snow

Monet and Me

Monet and Me
That Sky Shape in the Trees
by Bruce McMillan

I painted a series of paintings in my back fields in different seasons. I was intrigued by a certain shape of a sky space in the trees. It was prominent in my watercolors. After this, while researching art in various Monet series, I stumbled upon his Morning on the Seine (Matinee sur la Seine) series of twenty-two paintings. I was amazed that he'd also been intrigued by that same unusual sky shape in his trees. It was a focus in each one of his of his series of twenty-one paintings. I was astonished.

On different continents and over a hundred years apart, Monet and I had both been drawn to the same fluid moving shape of the sky in a break in the horizon's trees. This shape is the focus of our art, independently seen and unknowingly painted in every one of our series of paintings.

1
Matinee sur la Seine / Morning on the Seine
Claude Monet (1840-1926) French
Oil on canvas, 36" x 32" (w x h), 1897
Painted in Giverny, France
Christies London auction
sold $18,500,000 USD (14,397,500 GBP)

These are four of the twenty-two canvases Claude Monet painted of Matinee sur la Seine (Morning on the Seine) in summers of 1896 and 1897. The setting was a brief journey from his home, taking the artist just a few moments to get there, where the Epte tributary feeds into the Seine River in Giverny.

2
Matinee sur la Seine / Morning on the Seine
Claude Monet (1840-1926) French
Oil on canvas, 37" x 32" (w x h), 1897
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

Looking upstream on the Seine into the rising sun, on the left is the Giverny bank and on the right is the Ile aux Orties, a small wooded isle. Trees on both sides dominate the scene, those on the left Giverny bank are full.

3
Matinee sur la Seine / Morning on the Seine
Claude Monet (1840-1926) French
Oil on canvas, 36" x 35" (w x h), 1897
White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
NW Washington, District of Columbia

Monet usually started his paintings on the bateau-atelier, his specially designed studio-boat, , which he left anchored mid-river for the duration of the summer, rowing out to it each morning in a skiff, before completing the paintings on dry land in his studio.

4
Matinee sur la Seine / Morning on the Seine
Claude Monet (1840-1926) French
Oil on canvas, 36" x 35" (w x h), 1897
Christies NY 2017 auction sold $23,375,000 USD

The art critic Maurice Guillemot, who came to Giverny to interview Monet in the summer of 1897, described one early-morning session: "3.30 a.m. His torso snug in a white woolen hand-knit; his feet in a pair of sturdy hunting boots with thick dew-proof soles; his head covered by a battered brown felt hat, with the brim turned up to keep off the sun; a cigarette in his mouth (Monet) pushes open the door (of Le Pressoir), walks down the steps, follows the central path through his garden and comes to the river. There he unties his rowboat moored in the reeds along the bank, and with a few strokes reaches the bateau-atelier at anchor. A local man who accompanies him, unpackages his stretched canvases and the artist sets to work."

5
The Sky Arrived

in the back fields behind my home in Shapleigh, Maine painted plein air May 27, 2021, 18" x 14" (w x h), watercolor and ink on rough extra white watercolor paper, framed, $900. Also online HERE.

Also used as the postcard to promote Maine Audubon's 2021 Brush with Nature plein air event.

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Summer Sky Summer Field

on a ponds walk behind my home on July 1, 2020, painted July 6, 2020, 10" x 8" (w x h), watercolor and ink on rough extra white watercolor paper, framed, $300, also online HERE.

Also used in Carol Douglas' Watch Me Paint art class posting, "How did you get that color?" featuring my watercolors and my palette concluded with an assignment for her students to paint from my painting.

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Fall Sky Space Study 1

with autumn foliage in the iconic field behind my home painted October 30, 2022, 10" x 8" (w x h), watercolor and ink on rough extra white watercolor paper, framed, $300, also online HERE.

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Fall Sky Space Study 2

with autumn foliage in the iconic field behind my home painted October 30, 2022, 10" x 8" (w x h), watercolor and ink on rough extra white watercolor paper, framed, $300, also online HERE.