Alan Witney

Alan Witney, Kentish Weald From The North Downs, Oil Painting

c. 1965

This buoyant late 19th-century oil painting by Danish artist Niels Frederik Schiøttz-Jensen (1855-1941) depicts a coastal view in Capri, Italy, with a travelling family. Schiøttz-Jen...

This mid-19th-century oil painting by Danish-American artist Joachim Ferdinand Richardt (1819-1895) depicts a congregation observing a river baptism, probably in the Mississippi River. In 2009, at President Obama’s Inauguration luncheon, a panoramic view of Niagara was selected as the backdrop to his speech. It’s a breathtaking image, capturing the sublimity of the American Falls and the Horseshoe Falls in all their iconic majesty. The ‘Maid-of-the-Mist’, negotiates the rapids, a mere speck within a broad expanse of water. While beyond, a colossal sheet of spray is sharply illuminated through passing clouds. It was painted by the son of a bookbinder, a humble Danish artist who travelled extensively across the United States to document its nature, buildings and civilization. Admired in his own lifetime, this unassuming adventurer produced scores of resplendent vistas but also numerous vignettes documenting everyday activities. Joachim Ferdinand Richardt was initially destined to become a carpenter but, thankfully, enrolled at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts where he studied under three distinguished masters. Blessed with a skill for drawing, he was awarded medals and in 1839 began exhibiting at the prestigious Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition. In 1841, the Danish Royal Family acquired one of his works and six years later granted him a five-year stipend. Richardt trained at a time of exceptional creative output whereby Denmark was developing a clearer identity. Dubbed ‘National Romanticism’, artists were extolling their country’s natural beauty, while also celebrating humble folk life within rural environs. Stylistically, their work is somewhat comparable with German Romanticism...

"Untitled" oil on canvas painting by artist Alex Katz. Signed and dated A. Katz 46 recto lower right. Painted in 1946, during the period when Katz was studying at Cooper Union in New...

Impressive contemporary abstract expressionist painting by Stephen Heigh. Oil on canvas. Signed. Image size, 8H x 10L.