~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A Painterly
Orange and White
Visual Art Essay
Oranges on a Blue and White Cloth
Christina Bingle (1959- ) English
Oil on canvas, 25" x 21" (w x h), 1998
Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust,
Cheltenham and Gloucestershire, UK
Source: Artist's website, edited
Christina Bingle (1959- ) paints still lifes, landscapes and occasional portraits. "Still life happens in my studio in Stroud, Gloucestershire, England. Landscapes are painted out in the field. I'm intrigued by light and color, and the beautiful complexities of oil paint. " Chris is a member of the Cheltenham Group of Artists. She exhibits in group and solo shows locally and around the country. She has work in private and public collections across the UK. She has a BA (Honors) Fine Art, Preston Polytechnic, 1982, and an Adult Education Teaching Certificate Stage 2, Stroud College, 2000. The artist's website is HERE.
2
A Sailboat, Chioggia, Italy
Oil on board, 16" x 12" (w x h),
Jane Peterson (1876-1965), American
Doyle, New York, NY, 2018 auction sold $9,375 USD
Source: auction page, edited
Against the conventions of her time, fiercely independent and committed artist Jane Peterson traveled the world solo, painting street scenes, urban and natural vistas, and bold, avant-garde compositions of flowers. Her critically acclaimed works combine an academic attention to naturalistic detail with thoroughly modern, striking color combinations and loose, expressive brush strokes. Peterson rubbed shoulders with and drew influence from the artistic luminaries of the 20th century, attending Gertrude Stein's famous salons while living in Paris and taking trips with Louis Comfort Tiffany, Maurice Prendergast, and Childe Hassam. Collected by major museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
3
A Bucket of Salt Water
Joseph Edward Southall (1861-1944), British
Tempera on linen, 9" x 16" (w x h), 1912
Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, UK
Source: Art History Research edited
Joseph Edward Southall [also known as Joseph E. Southall; and as Joseph Southall] was born in Nottingham, England on 23 1861 and in 1862, following the death of his father, moved to Edgbaston, Birmingham. While still at school in York, he received lessons in watercolor painting from Edwin Moore (1813-1893). Between 1878 and 1882 he was articled to the Birmingham architectural firm Martin & Chamberlain, during which time he studied in the evenings at Birmingham School of Art where he absorbed the ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement, then prevalent at the School. He also won several prizes. At the end his four years with Martin & Chamberlain, he decided not to become an architect but instead to pursue a career as an artist. In about 1882, Southall returned to Edgbaston and settled at 13 Charlotte Road where he lived for the rest of his life.
4
Mie
Alex Katz (1927- ), American
Oil on board, 9" x 16" (w x h), 2009
Sotheby's 2020 auction sold 32,500 GBP / $43,800 USD
Source: Wiki, edited
Since 1951, Alex Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. He is well known for his large paintings, whose bold simplicity and heightened colors are considered as precursors to Pop Art. Alex Katz's Blue Umbrella I (1972) a portrait of his wife, Ada, under an umbrella sold for $4,150,000 at Phillips in London in 2019.
5
Joseph Rosenstock at Lewisohn Stadium
Frederick John England (1939- ), English
Oil on panel, 9" x 28" (w x h), 1966
The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery,
Staffordshire, England, UK
Source: Trent Art, Staffordshire, edited
Frederick J. England (1939- ), more widely known as Eric, is a prolific painter. He studied at Brighton College of Art, Brighton, England in 1956, in Norway in 1960, and in London in 1961. He went on to lecture in painting and art history at Leek School of Art in North Staffordshire, and became the President of the Society of Staffordshire Artists and a member of the Free Painters and Sculptors. He's exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, and has works in various permanent collections. His art was shown at the Royal Institute, The Royal Society of British Artists, and widely in the provinces. At the Paris Salon he won a Gold Medal in 1975, and other Silver Medals. His work is in the collections at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent. He has also been a Patron of The Civil and Public Service Artists Group. He works from his gallery in Leek, Staffordshire, England.
6
Fruit and Napkin
Ben Mathews (1889-1975), British
Oil on board, 18" x 12" (w x h), 1960
West Northamptonshire Council,
West Northamptonshire, UK
Source: Northampton Museum and Art Gallery edited
Ben Mathews, born in Duston, Northampton in 1889 trained and qualified as an architect before becoming an artist. He went to Paris in 1923 and studied painting at the Academie Modern under Ferdinand Leger and Othon Frietz. He lived and painted mostly in France between the two World Wars. After 1947, he spent a long time in Spain, where his work featured mainly Mediterranean subjects. Mathews an honorary secretary of Royal Institute of Painters. He held a one-man show in Northampton in 1972 and his last major exhibition was held at Mall Galleries, London, in 1973.
7
Orange Trees and Gate
Winslow Homer (1836-1910), American
Watercolor on paper, 21" x 14" (w x h), 1885
Sotheby's 2011 auction sold $1,314,500 USD
Source: Sotheby's notes, edited
In December 1884 Winslow Homer left the chill of his coastal home in Prouts Neck, Scarborough, Maine, and, together with his recently widowed father, sailed from New York to Nassau. Homer and his father stayed at the elegant Royal Victoria Hotel, the center of Nassau society. While the bright orange fruit was a familiar delicacy for urban Americans, the tree itself was an exotic presence. Homer's rendering of the lush green leaves of the tree, heavily laden with ripe fruit, standing outside a typical Bahamian residence neatly summarizes the tropical paradise that Nassau evoked in the minds of an American audience.
While some artists used the medium of watercolor as a handy portable summer tool, this was not the case for Homer. While Homer characteristically addressed the same themes in watercolor and oil, his watercolors were intended to stand on their own as full-fledged works of art. Homer understood that he could reach a wider audience of patrons and purchasers with his watercolors than with more expensive studio oils. Homer's first trip to the tropics resulted in thirty-six watercolors which he showed in New York and Boston. At least two, Orange Trees and Gate along with The Conch Divers (Collection of the Minneapolis Institute of the Fine Arts) were acquired by Russell Sturgis (1836-1909). Sturgis' interest in watercolor began in the early 1860s. Sturgis' approval was significant. He was a prominent architect and art critic, who advised the reading public on how to judge art and what to purchase. He also was a founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He'd supported Homer since 1870 when he arranged for a Pennsylvania iron and steel magnate, to buy a Homer oil painting.
On a personal note: I've been familiar with another watercolor from his Nassau trip, though I had no idea who the artist was or where it was. My father had a Homer Winslow print of Sloop, Nassau (Metropolitan Museum of Art) hanging on out living room wall, a memory instilled in me as a high-schooler. See it HERE.
8
Wrapped Oranges
William J. McCloskey (1859-1941), American
Oil on canvas, 24" x 11", circa 1890
Christie's January 22, 2026 auction
estimate, $250,000 - $350,000 USD
Source: Christie's notes edited
A student of Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, McCloskey would have attended classes where the American master gave such advice as, "Paint an orange. After you have it done, introduce a white thing...Take an egg or an orange, a piece of black cloth, and a piece of white paper and try to get the light and color." McCloskey explored the subject of oranges wrapped in white paper to great success throughout his career. In the 1880s, he shared a studio with his wife, Alberta Binford, who was an artists in her own right. Each painter specialized in still lifes, with a special interest in oranges and their blossoms; it has even been suggested that the two may have collaborated on occasion.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end
