Displaying items by tag: illustration

Early in 1903, illustrator Howard Pyle (1853-1911) began work on a set of nine wall-sized panels for the drawing room of his home at 907 Delaware Avenue in Wilmington, Delaware. The Museum announced that all nine panels are now on view in their entirety for the first time in 75 years. They have been semi-permanently installed in the Museum’s second floor Vinton Illustration Galleries.

While two of the panels were on view during the Howard Pyle retrospective exhibition in 2011-2012, which celebrated the Museum’s 100th anniversary, the complete set has recently undergone conservation work.

The first carved woodblock prints by Wharton Esherick, an artist who was a major figure in American crafts, have just been republished. They illustrated "Rhymes of Early Jungle Folk," a book of children's verse, published in 1922.

Pieces by Esherick, known for his expressive, modernist furniture and wood sculpture, are now collected by major museums around the world. But he started as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

Unfortunately, nobody wanted his paintings.

The Delaware College of Art and Design in downtown Wilmington is making small expansions that could later trigger bigger and more significant projects for the two-year school.

Next to DCAD, developer Buccini/Pollin Group is putting up a $6 million, five-story apartment building at 606 N. Market St. DCAD, which is known for its majors in photography, illustration, fine arts, animation, interior design and graphic design, will occupy the first floor of that building.

DCAD President Stuart Baron said the school will house sculpture studios there.

At first blush, Edward Gorey's popularity might seem something of a puzzle. The prolific author and artist reveled in hermetic scenes of stiff, upper-crust figures in quasi-Edwardian garb and sometimes eyebrow-raising story lines about childhood calamities and grisly murders.

But what might have been limitations to his works turned out to be their very strengths, because of the originality of his vision, his comfortable embrace of absurdity and—perhaps most important—his wonderful, quirky sense of humor.

Who else could create an A-to-Z book about varied disasters befalling children and make it seem charming? Yet he does just that in "The Gashlycrumb Tinies; or, After the Outing" (1963), through his clever, darkly witty turns of phrase and the appealing ridiculousness of the whole thing.

A pair of exhibitions now at the Loyola University Museum of Art—the first ever of this scope in Chicago—offers an exhaustive, fascinating look at this endearing master of the gently spooky or what he called the "mildly unsettling."

Founded in 1998 by husband and wife team Judy Goffman Cutler and Laurence S. Cutler, the National Museum of American Illustration art (NMAI) is the first institution in the country to be devoted entirely to American illustration (Fig. 1). A private, nonprofit organization, the NMAI was originally built to house the Cutlers' personal art collection, an assemblage of works from the Golden Age of American illustration, a period lasting from 1895 until 1945. The Golden Age was a direct result of the vast improvements in printing technology at a time when newspapers, magazines, and illustrated books were the main source of media. No longer constrained by the limits of the medium, illustrators were able to freely experiment with color and new techniques. With assistance from the National Arts Club, a private club devoted to promoting public interest in the arts, the NMAI opened its doors to the public in 2000.

The National Geographic Society is well known for its collection of photographs chronicling scientific exhibitions, explorations, archaeology, wildlife, and various cultures of the world. With 11.5 million photos and original illustrations in its collection, National Geographic will bring a small selection from the archive to Christie’s December auction. There will be 240 pieces spanning from the late 1800s to the present including photographs as well as paintings by artists such as Andrew and N.C. Wyeth. The National Geographic Collection: The Art of Exploration is expected to bring about $3 million on December 6. This marks the first time any of the institution’s collection has been sold.

While many of the works have never before been published or exhibited, a number of them are well known including Steve McCurry’s Afghan Girl that has a pre-sale estimate of $30,000 to $50,000. Other works include a 1969 illustration entitled A Blue Globe Hanging in Space–The Earth as Seen From the Moon by Charles Bittinger, a photo of a diver with an octopus taken by Jacques Cousteau, and The Duel on the Beach, a painting by N.C. Wyeth.

All proceeds from the auction will be put towards the promotion and preservation of the National Geographic archive as well as the young photographers, artists, and explorers who will guide the institution into the future.

Held in New York on September 25^th, Christie’s American Art sale counted two Norman Rockwell works on paper as the top lots. Study for ‘The Runaway,’ perhaps the artist’s most iconic image, brought in $206,500. The original estimate for Study at auction was $80,000–$120,000. In 1958, the completed work, which features a young boy at a diner in conversation with a policeman, was used as a Saturday Evening Post cover.

The other Rockwell that fared well was Keeping His Course (Exeter Grill) which had an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000 and ended up selling for $218,500. The work was originally conceived as an illustration for the book Keeping His Course (1918) by Ralph Henry Barbour. A less recognizable Rockwell, A Man’s Wife, didn’t quite reach it’s $30,000–$50,000 estimate and ending up selling for $27,500.

Edgar Alwin Payne’s Western painting La Marque Lake, High Sierra more than doubled its $25,000–$35,000 estimate when it sold for $80,500. Other works that exceeded expectations were Andrew Wyeth’s watercolor, Front Door at Teel’s (estimate: $50,000–$70,000), that realized $93,700 and Josef Mario Korbel’s Andante (Dancing Girls) (estimate: $30,000–$50,000), a bronze that brought in $62,500.

The auction offered over 160 lots including Impressionist and Modernist works, Western pieces, illustrations, and bronzes. Artists on the block included Stuart Davis, Milton Avery, Will Barnet, Edward Hopper, and William Merritt Chase. Expected to reach in excess of $2.5 million, the total sale realized for the auction was $2,649,475.

While the auction reached its estimate, only 63% sold by lot and 76% by value. Debra Force of Debra Force Fine Art, Inc. said, “63% is terrible but there are many reasons for the poor performance. September is too early in the season for a sale. People are just getting back from summer, putting kids in school, and it’s in the middle of the Jewish holidays.” Force added, “The important collectors don’t look at these mid-season sales. They should, but they’re waiting for the major sale.“

Gavin Spanierman of Gavin Spanierman Ltd. echoed Force’s sentiments. “63% is pretty scary if you’re a seller but that’s representative of mid-season sales. However, the fact that the two Rockwells did well considering they were not phenomenal, shows that there is strength in the market.”