Product Description
Victor Arnautoff “The Felt Hat” Oil on Canvas c. 1930

VICTOR ARNAUTOFF (1896-1979) USA
The Felt Hat c. 1930
Oil on canvas, white gold frame
Signed: V. Arnautoff, lower right
Exhibited: Art Center San Francisco, 1931 (see image of the review in the San Francisco Examiner, July 12th, 1931)
For more information see: The New Deal for Artists, Richard D. McKinzie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), Coit Tower, San Francisco : Its History and Art
Painting: H: 26” x W: 21”
Framed: H: 32 ½” x 27 ½”
Price: $60,000
Victor Arnautoff created paintings and watercolors, focusing on portraits, still lifes and rural landscapes in his early years, and moved to more socially conscious themes later in his career. Arnautoff was a native of Russia, to which he returned during the 1960s after thirty years in the United States. He came to San Francisco from Russia via China, bringing his wife and children with him, and studied at the California School of Fine Arts studying with Ralph Stackpole and Edgar Walter before going to Mexico. There he worked as an assistant to the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. During the 1930s, Arnautoff worked as project director and one of the artists selected to create the famed Coit Tower murals, he played a key role in determining the political and social content of the frescoes painted in the San Francisco landmark. His own contribution, City Life, appears to be a lively, non-political melding of downtown San Francisco scenes; however, closer study reveals two leftist newspapers on the newsstand, while the city’s most mainstream daily, the San Francisco Chronicle, is strangely missing. Arnautoff also painted frescoes in the Military Chapel at San Francisco’s Presidio, in the Anne Bremer Library of the San Francisco Art Institute, and in high schools and other buildings in the Bay Area. He was a professor of art at Stanford University from 1939 until his retirement in 1963.
Victor Arnautoff “The Felt Hat” Oil on Canvas c. 1930
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JAN ET JOËL MARTEL (1896-1966) France
PRIMAVERA Paris
Pair of courting Faintail Pigeon Sculptures c.1925-30
Black glazed earthenware with silver / platinum decorative dot motif.
Marks: PRIMAVERA FRANCE, 12684
For related model: The Art Deco Style in Household Objects, Architecture, Scupture, Graphics, Jewelry, Theodore Menten (New York: Dover, 1972), p. 179.
For more information see: Joël et Jan Martel: sculpteurs 1896-1966, Christophe Vital, et al. (Paris: Gallimard / Electa, 1996), pp. 127-9
H: 8 1/16” x L: 9” x D at tail: 5 1/4”
H: 7 1/8” x L: 10” x D at tail: 5 1/4”
Jan & Joël Martel (the Martel Brothers/Twins, born in Nantes on 5 April 1896, both died in 1966)
The twin Martel sculptors were among the founding members of Union des Artistes Modernes, and their original works include ornamental sculptures, statues, monuments and fountains displaying characteristics typical of the Art Déco and Cubist periods. The brothers took part in a number of Paris exhibitions including the Salon des Indépendants, Salon d’Automne, Salon des Tuileries and the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in 1925. In 1932, they created the Claude Debussy monument which sits on the boulevard Lannes in Paris. Between 1924-1926, Robert Mallet-Stevens designed a studio for the Martel twins at 10 Rue Mallet-Stevens in Paris’ 16th Arrondissement.
LOUIS F. BERNEKER (1872-1937) USA
“The Three Graces” c. 1910
Oil on canvas, gilt Arts & Crafts style frame
Signed: Louis F. Berneker (lower left)
For more information see: Who Was Who in American Art
(Madison, Conn.: Sound View Press, 1985) p. 50
Canvas: H: 25 1/8” x W: 30 1/8”
Frame: H: 35 5/8” x W: 40 5/8”
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Louis Berneker first began his art training at the St. Louis School of Fine Art. From 1903 to 1904, he studied at the prestigious Académie Julian in Paris under J.P. Laurens. Upon his return to the United States, he lived primarily in New York City and later in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he died in 1937. An accomplished painter in oils and watercolors, he was a member of the New York Watercolor Club, American Watercolor Society, the National Arts Club, and an associate member of the National Academy of Design. In 1930, the painter won prizes for works exhibited at both the National Academy of Design and Allied Artists of America’s juried shows. Berneker exhibited his work at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1910 to 1914 and again in 1921, as well as at the National Academy of Design in 1930 (prize), Art Institute of Chicago, and the Society of Independent Artists. His works are housed in the Church of St. Gregory the Great, New York City; the Belmont Theatre, both in New York City, the Chicago Theatre, and the Dallas Art Academy.
GERRIT V. SINCLAIR (1890-1955) USA
Third Ward Milwaukee c. 1940
Oil on board, lemon gold frame
Signed: GV Sinclair (lower right corner on front of painting)
For more information see: Who Was Who in American Art (Madison, Conn.: Sound View Press, 1985) p. 571.
Painting H: 15” x W: 20”
Framed H: 20 7/16” x W: 25 7/16”
Price: $27,500
Gerrit V. Sinclair was born in Grand Haven, Michigan in 1890. He studied art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1910 to 1915. His most well known teachers at the Art Institute were John Vanderpoel and John Norton. In 1917 the artist enlisted in the Army Ambulance Corps and served in northern Italy and Austria. Scenes from his experience abroad are recorded in his works of the early 1920s. Following the war, Sinclair settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he became a member of the faculty of the Layton School of Art upon the school’s founding in 1920. He continued to teach at the Layton School and at the Oxbow Summer School of Art in Saugatuck, Michigan until his retirement in 1954. Sinclair is recognized both as an important artist and teacher from the Great Lakes region. During his lifetime Sinclair’s paintings were exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, the Salon Printemps in Paris, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design, the Whitney Museum in New York, the New York Watercolor Club, the Brooklyn Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, the Art Institute of Chicago and in many other museums and galleries. He received numerous prizes and commissions for his work including a W.P.A. mural commission for the Federal Building in Wassau, Wisconsin. Sinclair was a member of Wisconsin Painters & Sculptors, Wisconsin Federation of the Arts and the Wisconsin Painting Museum. His style is a blend of realism and Impressionism but is clearly modern in its abstract concern for composition and color. Sinclair is best known for his regionalist paintings of rural and urban Wisconsin. His farm scene entitled ”Spring in Wisconsin” was exhibited at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Gerrit V. Sinclair died in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1955.
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