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Standing Leaning Abstract Nudes
Visual Essay
Standing Nude
Frank Dobson C.B.E. (1886-1963) British
Pencil, charcoal, watercolor, gouache and wash
on paper, 14" x 20" (w x h), 1931
Sotheby's 2020 UK auction sold $845 USD
Source Wiki edited:
Frank Owen Dobson CBE (The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), RA (The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire ) (1886-1963) was a British artist and sculptor. Dobson began as a painter, however, he turned increasingly toward sculpture in a more or less realist style. Throughout the 1920s and the early 1930s he built a reputation as an outstanding sculptor and was among the first in Britain to prefer direct carving of the material rather than modelling a preliminary model. The simplified forms and flowing lines of much of his sculptures, particularly his female nudes, showed the influence of African art. From 1946 to 1953 Dobson was Professor of Sculpture at the Royal College of Art. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1953. While Dobson was one of the most esteemed artists of his time, after his death his reputation declined with the move towards post modernism and conceptual art. However, Dobson is now seen as one of the most important British sculptors of the 20th century. Frank Dobson Square was constructed by London County Council in 1963, the year of Dobson's death to commemorate his life and work. The centerpiece of the square is the Woman and Fish fountain, a sculpture designed and completed by Dobson in 1951.
In 1995 the art critic Brian Sewell recalled the great loss of much of Dobson's work after his death: "After his death, his widow asked me to help her clear the studio at Stamford Bridge, and I was appalled at the destruction that she wrought, smashing to smithereens small clay and terra cotta models, tearing fine drawings in red and black chalk, hundreds of them, burning the fragments in a dustbin, all because the subjects were erotic. I was allowed to save pastel drawings of exotic and rare birds, and watercolors of farmyards and a pastoral life long gone, but for the figures engaged in sexual congress, face to face, head to toe and doggy style as explicit as any by his old friend Eric Gill, Mrs. Dobson would accept no plea that they were beautiful, no argument that they were fired by a quality not to be found in the pure essence of the torsos that survive, and like a ferociously implacable angel at the Last Judgment, she bent to the business of destruction."
Nude
John Duncan Fergusson (1874-1961), Scottish
Charcoal and watercolor on paper, 5" x 10" (w x h), 1916
Christies 2019 UK auction sold $6,000 USD
Source Wiki edited:
John Duncan Fergusson (1874-1961) was a Scottish artist and sculptor, regarded as one of the major artists of the Scottish Colourists school of painting. This painting was painted in the middle of WWI. At the outbreak of World War I, Fergusson was considered to be at the forefront of modern British painting. During the war years, however, he achieved little artistically and it was only towards the end of the war that he regained the momentum in his work. In 1928 he and his partner, the dancer Margaret Morris, moved to Paris, where they lived until the possibility of war loomed over Europe again, prompting the couple to move to Glasgow in 1939 where they remained for the rest of their lives. In 1943 he published his book on "Modern Scottish Painting". On his death, his widow, Margaret Morris, presented fourteen of his paintings to the University of Stirling when it was founded in 1968. His work remains popular, and in 1992 a permanent gallery, The Fergusson Gallery, was founded in Perth, Scotland to house it.
Ausziehende Frau / Woman Undressing
George Grosz (1893-1959) German
Watercolor on paper, 15" x 20" (w x h), 1938
Christies 2019 auction sold $3,250 USD
Source Wiki and various sources edited:
George Grosz (1893-1959) was a German artist known especially for his caricature drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity groups during the Weimar Republic. He emigrated to the United States in 1933, and became a naturalized citizen in 1938, the year he painted this painting. Abandoning the style and subject matter of his earlier work, he exhibited regularly and taught for many years at the Art Students League of New York. In May 1959 he returned to Berlin, where he died in July falling down a flight of stairs after a night of drinking.
In 1968, the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, NY purchased his painting Eclipse of the Sun for $15,000 USD, raising the money by public subscription. It portrays in a room's setting with men a damning critique of the military industrial complex that controlled Weimar Germany where power and greed reigned supreme. This painting became a destination of protesters of the Vietnam War in Heckscher Park (where the museum is sited) in the late 1960s and early 70s. In 2006, the museum proposed selling Eclipse of the Sun at its then-current appraisal of $19,000,000 to pay for repairs and renovations to the building. Public outcry prevailed. The museum didn't sell and announced plans to create a dedicated space for display of the painting in the renovated museum.
In 2022 in Germany, the Little Grosz Museum (Kleines Grosz Museum) opened in a Berlin's district. Housed in a mid-century former gas station that was converted to a living space in 2008, the museum is funded by private donors and also houses a cafe and shop.
Model with Raised Arms
Mary Ellen Riell, American
Watercolor on paper, 6" x 10" (w x h), circa 1995-2023
$125 USD
Source artist's website edited:
Mary Ellen Riell, exhibiting since 1995, grew up Brooklyn, NY. As a teenager she studied at the Art Students League in New York City. She graduated Brooklyn College. She earned a Masters in Education with a studio concentration in screen printing from the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY in 1994. Mary Ellen was honored with the Grand Prize in the Cooperstown (NY) Art Association's 79th Annual National Exhibition, Best in Show at the Laffer Gallery's Annual Upstate Artists Exhibition in 2012 and the Adirondack Pastel National Silver Award. She's participated in over 100 exhibitions throughout the Northeast. She is a current member and former co-director of the Oakroom Artists. Her website with this art for sale is HERE.
Abstracted Standing Nude
Jack Freeman (1938-2014) American
Watercolor on paper, 17" x 24" (w x h), circa 1950s-199os
$575
Lost Art Salon, San Francisco, CA
Various sources edited:
Jack Freeman (1938-2014) studied at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, with Oskar Kokoschka at the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in 1962 and with Bill Thompson at Ealing College, London, in 1963. He received two degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute, a B.F.A. in 1966 and an M.F.A. in 1969. Freeman's style varied between Abstract Expressionism, the Bay Area Figurative Movement, and bright colors with plein air landscape painting. Gallery sale HERE.
Leaning Nude
Sanyu (Chang Yu) (1901-1966) Chinese, French
Watercolor and ink on paper, 11" x 10" (w x h),
circa 1920s-1930s
Christies 2016 Hong Kong auction sold $104,000 USD
Source Wiki edited:
Born Chang Yu (Sanyu) in 1901 in Sichuan Province, China. The family's wealth allowed Sanyu to be schooled at home, which included calligraphy lessons with the Sichuan calligrapher Zhao Xi (1877-1938) and painting lessons with his father, known in Nanchong for his skill in painting lions and horses.
In 1920, 19-year-old Sanyu travelled to France under a government-sponsored work-study program. Entranced by the charms of Paris, Sanyu spent more than four decades in the artistic neighborhood of Montparnasse, Paris. In the late 1920s, French scholar and influential collector Henri-Pierre Roché took a strong interest in Sanyu's paintings, acquiring many of the artist's works for his personal collection. At his home, Sanyu's paintings were hung side by side with works of Matisse. It was in France where Sanyu met 21-year-old Marcelle. She was impressed with Sanyu's talent and requested lessons. Three years later they married.
In 1948, Sanyu traveled to New York. Looking for a place to stay, he met the renowned Swiss-American photographer Robert Frank who was planning an extended trip to Paris. The two decided to exchange studios. A change of plans, however, kept Frank in New York and they became roommates. According to Frank, "Sanyu came to America to promote ping-pong. That was his only reason for coming." Over the next two decades, Sanyu and Frank developed a deep friendship. As Frank's career as a photographer took off, he never forgot his dear friend and kept his paintings with him wherever he moved over the next fifty years. In 1997, Frank sold these paintings and donated the proceeds to establish the Sanyu Scholarship Fund at Yale University to support Chinese students of art.
Sanyu's painting Five Nudes (circa 1950-1959) sold in 2019 for $38,72o,000 USD at Christie's Contemporary Art Evening Sale in Hong Kong.
Femme nue, couronnée d'un Uraeus /
Nude Woman, Crowned with a Uraeus
Ureas: Upright form of an Egyptian cobra,
used as a symbol of divine authority in ancient Egypt.
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) French
Watercolor and graphite on paper, 10" x 13"
(w x h), circa 1900
Christies 2015 auction sold $43,750 USD
Source Wiki edited:
The popularity of French artist Auguste Rodin's (1840-1917) most famous sculptures, such as The Thinker, obscures his total creative output. A prolific artist, he created thousands of busts, figures, and sculptural fragments over more than five decades. He painted in oils, especially in his thirties, and in watercolors. The Musée Rodin holds 7,000 of his drawings and prints, in chalk and charcoal.
Rodin is in the top ten list of artists whose work is copied as forgeries. Rodin fought against forgeries of his works as early as 1901, and since his death, many cases of organized, large-scale forgeries have been revealed.
Femme Nue / Female Nude
Kees Van Dongen (1877-1968) Dutch French
Watercolor, gouache and black chalk on paper,
6" x 10" (w x h),
Christies European 2011 auction sold $27,400 USD
Source Wiki edited:
Cornelis Theodorus Maria "Kees" van Dongen (1877-1968) was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauves. Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually into a rough pointillist style. Van Dongen gained a reputation for his sensuous - at times garish - portraits of women.
With a playful cynicism he remarked of his popularity as a portraitist with high society women, "The essential thing is to elongate the women and especially to make them slim. After that it just remains to enlarge their jewels. They are ravished." This remark is reminiscent of another of his sayings, "Painting is the most beautiful of lies".
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