Franz A. Bischoff (1864 - 1929)
The Watchman, Zion National Park, Utah, circa 1928
24 x 30 inches
Oil on canvas
SOLD
Signed lower left: Franz A Bischoff
Franz Albert Bischoff trained as a painter of fine ceramics and porcelain, which is reflected in the vibrant colors and expressive design of his masterful The Watchman, Zion National Park Utah, painted in 1928. Painted near the modern-day entrance to the park, it captures a moment of peaceful majesty.
Gunnar Widforss, American (1879-1934)
Bright Angel Landing, Zion National Park
19.5 x 17 inches
Watercolor on paper
signed lower left
SOLD
Nationally renowned during the early 20th century as a superb painter of the Southwest’s national parks, Gunnar Widforss most likely painted Bright Angel Landing, Zion National Park between 1920 and 1923. His extraordinary dexterity in the unforgiving watercolor medium allowed him to depict light and shadow in an extraordinary way. His admiration of Zion’s grandeur and subtleties of color emerge in the remarkable and rare image of Southern Utah’s most celebrated park.
James Everett Stuart (1852 - 1941)
The Grand Geyser - Upper Geyser Basin Yellowstone, July 1885
18 1/4 x 30 inches
Oil on canvas
Stuart first traveled to Yellowstone in 1885, and camped for several weeks, supplying himself with fish for food, climbing steep cliffs including Electric Peak, and filling his sketchbook for studio paintings. He had studied art with Virgil Williams, Raymond Yelland, Thomas Hill, and William Keith at the San Francisco School of Design, and hungry to paint the untrammeled West, set out with his paints, easel and tent, from which he sold his paintings near tourist sites in Yellowstone. In this scene, Stuart captures the power, drama, and scale of the great curiosity that were Yellowstone’s geysers.
Thomas Hill (1829 - 1908)
Yellowstone Geysers
14 x 21 inches
Oil on canvas
Signed lower right
SOLD
Thomas Hill’s Yellowstone Geysers, c. 1883, was painted well before it became widely accessible to tourists. A peer of Albert Bierstadt, William Keith, and other Hudson River School artists, Hill adapted his Romantic style to the West’s grand vistas. In Yellowstone Geysers, we see figures who are dwarfted by the awe-inspiring natural features, implying the grandeur and permanence of nature in comparison to ephemeral, human existence.
Olaf Wieghorst (1899 - 1988)
Glacier National Park, Montana, ca. 1946
oil on canvas
20 x 24 inches
Signed in lower right corner
SOLD
He was known as the "Dean of Western Artists" and placed in a class with Frederic Remington and Charles Russell. Olaf was at one time an acrobat, trick rider, cavalryman, cowboy, mounted policeman, and one of the great western artists. His experiences as a cowboy and horseman give truth and reverence to his work. Olaf Wieghorst created his art not only with a skillful hand and eye, but also with a skillful heart. In 1946 he traveled to Glacier National Park, and brought all his love for the American West into this view of the extraordinary vistas of Glacier.
John Fery (1859 - 1934)
Glacier Park
22 x 36 inches
Oil on canvas
Thomas Moran (1837 - 1926)
The Grand Canyon of 1912 Arizona (from Hermit Rim Road), 1912
24 x 32 inches
chromolithograph
SOLD
Thomas Moran’s chromolithographs capture the grandeur and wonder of his watercolor paintings, but were more intimate. Moran was involved in the selection and production of the works, which involved a painstaking and complex process which, due to its complexity and cost, went out of use in the 1920s. The Grand Canyon of Arizona (from Hermit Rim Road) captures the luminosity and sense of manifest destiny of the artist’s masterworks.
Frederick S. Dellenbaugh (1853 - 1935)
The Grand Canyon
4 June, 1903
11 x 15 1/2 inches
Oil on canvas
SOLD
Dellenbaugh received his artistic training at the Académie Julian in Paris. At the age of seventeen he was hired to accompany Major John Wesley Powell on the his second expedition of the Colorado River, on which Powell sought to map the entirety of the Colorado River and to collect geological information on the Colorado Plateau. Dellenbaugh was hired to assist in the making of maps and to paint features of the landscape that could not be easily photographed. Dellenbaugh, entranced with the country returned to the Southwest and painted this geographically detailed view of the Grand Canyon in 1903.
Hiroshi Yoshida
Grand Canyon, 1925
10 1/4 x 15 5/8 inches
woodblock print
SOLD
A romantic realist, Yoshida’s style resembles that of an English 19th Century watercolorist applied to Japanese themes. Yoshida is noted for subtle colors and naturalistic atmosphere. This stunning print captures the stark contrasts of light and shadow, red rock and white snow of the Grand Canyon in winter solitude.
Arthur William Best (1859 - 1935)
Grand Canyon
10 x 20 inches
Oil on board
SOLD
Signed lower right
Prominent early 20th-century landscape painter in Northern California, Arthur Best was especially known for his paintings of the Grand Canyon, Arizona desert, and Sierra Nevada mountains. He became a staff artist for the San Francisco Examiner, and in 1904, did a series of Grand Canyon paintings. In 1905, he was commissioned by the Southern Pacific Railroad to paint pictures of the Southwest and Mexico. This colorful and dramatic image has both whimsy and romantic elements.
Gunnar Widforss (1879 - 1934)
Grand Canyon
14 3/4 x 24 1/2 inches
Watercolor on paper
SOLD
Conrad Buff (1886 - 1975)
Deep Canyon, undated
27 x 26 inches
Oil on paper board
Signed lower center
In the 1920s, Los Angeles art critic wrote, “Conrad Buff comprehends the enormity of the West. More than that, he adds thereto a discernment of the stylized and conventionalized forms in which the West abound. Not one artist in a hundred grasps the significance of the West’s dynamic forms.” In Deep Canyon, Buff uses highly stylized forms to represent the enormity of the sheer canyon walls, a hallmark of his painting style. Deep Canyon portrays the vastness of the Grand Canyon with the ribbon of the Colorado River.
George Biddle (1185 - 1973)
Mesquite and Sycamore: Valley of the Virgin River, Utah, 1947
15 x 21 inches
Oil on board
SOLD
Is a storm coming in or moving out? In Mesquite and Sycamore: Valley of the Virgin River, Utah, George Biddle, an artist best known for his social realist murals of the 1930s, leaves us wondering. A sycamore tree on the left and a mesquite tree on the right serve to frame the work and lead the viewer’s eye to the mountains in the background. As the tallest objects in Biddle’s landscape, the trees also serve a greater purpose: as their roots and branches reach upward our eyes travel with them to the turbulent clouds above. The Virgin River valley is particularly prone to violent and sudden flash floods. Biddle utilizes his training as a printmaker to use long, cross-hatched brush strokes in his clouds. Although things may not be in motion on the ground below, the stark white highlights in the sky ignite the work with movement.
Conrad Buff (1886 - 1975)
Utah, undated
11 x 15 inches
Oil on Canvas
Signed and dated lower right
In Utah, Buff uses his broad, pointillist-style technique to suggest the contours of the Virgin River coursing through Zion National Park. His dynamic and bold use of alternating colors and broad, energetic brush strokes creates a vivid image of the Three Sisters formation in Zion.
Lee Green Richards (1878 - 1950)
Bryce Canyon, 1928
18 x 13 inches
Oil on canvas
SOLD
Lee Greene Richards has been celebrated as one of Utah’s most significant artists. Trained at both the Academie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris just after the turn of the 20th century, Richards was an integral part of the cohort of Utah-based artists that included Mahonri Young, A.B. Wright, and John Willard Clawson.
It may have been Richards’ frequent visits to and residencies in Paris that influenced his painting of Bryce Canyon. Art historians Donna Poulton and Vern Swanson assert that, “As a landscape painter, Richards unleashed a fury of Impressionistic brushwork and Fauvist hues…While his contributions to red-rock genre were few, they are significant. He might be the first artist to paint a semi-modern view of Bryce Canyon.” (Painters of Utah’s Canyons and Deserts, p. 56) Richards' Bryce Canyon is one of only a few to come on the market in recent years. It captures an era of fresh, modernist interpretation of the American Southwest, marking an important transcendence of the era of Romanticism embodied by Thomas Moran and others. It is framed in a custom, hand-carved, and gilded American School frame.
