David Jan Curtis

late 20th Century Post Impressionist marine oil painting STAITHES YORKSHIRE

2000

ARTIST: Bill Dean ROI WG (1932-) British TITLE: "Stubble Burning" SIGNED: lower right MEDIUM: oil on board SIZE: 29cm x 39cm inc frame CONDITION: very good...

ARTIST: Ann Oram RSW (1956-) Scottish TITLE: “Vejer De La Frontera Spain” SIGNED: lower right MEDIUM: oil on canvas SIZE: 62cm x 52cm inc fram...

Signed lower right, 'K. L. Hilkier' for Knud Ove Hilkier (Danish, 1884-1953) and painted circa 1950 A lyrical Expressionist oil showing women fetching water from a fountain in the sunny piazza of a northern Italian town, with a view beyond towards the Alps rising in the distance. A powerful and vibrant work by this prominent member of the Bornholm School. Born in Copenhagen, Knud Hilkier first studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (1901-7). He was the recipient of numerous prestigious scholarships including the Hielmstierne-Rosencrone (1913); Raben-Levetzau (1914 and 1919); the Ronge Award (1915) and the Akkadian Scholarship (1916) which allowed him to further his studies in Spain and Italy and, most importantly, to make frequent visits to Paris. In Paris, he was influenced by the prevailing Impressionist style which caused his palette to lighten and his brushwork to become looser and more expressive. His subsequent studies with Sigurd Swane...

Attributed to Hortense Mattice Gordon (Canadian, 1886-1961) and painted circa 1925. Attribution based on similar style, composition and subject matter of McGill University's 'Old Country Store, Ontario' (1925) by the artist (see last image). An exceptionally fine, early twentieth-century, Post-Impressionist oil showing a view of a rustic village with cottages dramatically dappled by the shade of large trees. Hamilton artist Hortense Crompton Mattice Gordon was one of Canada’s earliest non-representational painters, embracing abstraction in the 1930s. She was also an active member of Canada's first English-speaking abstract group, Painters Eleven. A scholarship recipient, Hortense Mattice first attended the Hamilton Art School and, subsequently, moved to Chatham, Ontario. Initially focusing on porcelain painting, Mattice quickly began building a portfolio of oils and, from 1908, was exhibiting both her porcelain and landscapes at what is now the Chatham Cultural Centre (1908) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (1909). During this time, Mattice frequently traveled to the United States and, in 1915, visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, where she would have seen early works by important modernists including Picasso and Matisse. She started her teaching career in Chatham but, having received a job offer from the artist John Sloan Gordon, returned to Hamilton to teach at the Hamilton Art School in 1918. The two artists married in 1920. In 1922, Gordon and her husband took a study trip to France and, inspired by the fervent of Modernist ideas in Paris, expanded her own approaches to art, developing an increasingly soft, loose paint handling style. It was not until the 1930’s, after a few more trips to France and her discovery of Piet Mondrian’s work, that elements of abstraction began to appear in Gordon’s work. After the death of her husband in 1940, Gordon attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art and studied with Hans Hoffmann (1941-1945) whose influence and friendship pushed her to explore non-objective painting. After her training with Hofmann and in Cranbrook, Gordon began to exhibit regularly and with success in both Canada and the United States including at the Riverside Museum (New York, 1947), Creative Gallery (New York, 1952), in Ann Arbor (Michigan, 1952), Phillips Gallery (Detroit, 1952), the Flint Institute of Arts (Michigan, 1952), Mount Allison University (New Brunswick, 1952), the Galerie Agnes Lefort in Montréal and Art Gallery of Hamilton (retrospective, 1960). She was a member of the Contemporary Artists of Hamilton (honorary president in 1948), the Ontario Society of Artists, the Hamilton Women...