ART & ARTISTS

Friday, 4 July 2025

Abel Warshawsky - part 2

Abel Georges Warshawsky was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania in 1883. He spent his childhood in Cleveland, Ohio where he studied at the Cleveland Art Institute. Warshawsky moved to New York where he studied at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. His brother, Alexander also became an artist.

In 1909, Abel Warshawsky left the U.S. for Paris where he remained for thirty years. There, he developed his unique style, combining Impressionism and Realism. He returned to the United States annually, mostly to sell his paintings, but remained active in the Parisian art scene until 1939. He exhibited his works in Cleveland, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Paris.

Before the start of World War II, Warshawsky left Paris and settled in Monterey, California. Warshawsky married Ruth Tate in 1941. He died from heart failure in 1962. His works are in the permanent collections of the Akron Art institute, the Cleveland museum of Art, the Luxembourg Museum, the De Young Museum, the Petit Palais, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

For more information about the artist see part 1 also.

This is part 2 of a 2-part post on the works of Abel Georges Warshawsky (dates were not found for these works):

Harbour scene in Brittany, France
oil on canvas 65.4 x 92.2 cm

Garden in bloom
oil on canvas 60.3 x 80.6 cm

Flowers on the terrace
oil on panel 33 x 40.6 cm

The Luxembourg Gardens (Paris)
oil on artist cardboard 33 x 40.8 cm

Landscape with Castle
oil on canvas 54.6 x 24.7 cm

Inn courtyard, Brittany
oil on panel 26.6 x 22.2 cm

Muralistic Sketch
oil on board 24.1 x 45.7 cm

Mountain village street scene
oil on canvas 66 x 81.2 cm

Mountain & township, Southern California
oil on canvas 162.5 x 203.2 cm

Man with cap
oil on canvas 54.6 x 45.7 cm

Ocean Bay, inlet with boats
oil on canvas 63.5 x 81.2 cm

Narrow Street, Finistere
oil on board 45.7 x 54.6 cm

Painter and Nymphs
oil on masonite 32.3 x 40.6 cm

Portrait of a man
oil on canvas (size not given)

Portrait of the artist's wife in Eastern European dress
oil on canvas 107.3 x 81.3 cm

Portrait of a Gentleman
oil on canvas 63.5 x 53.3 cm

Portrait of Curtis T. Baker
oil on canvas 57 x 46 cm

Portrait of a young woman
oil on canvas 81.3 x 64.8 cm

Portrait of a woman
oil on canvas (size not given)

Portrait of a woman
oil on canvas 55.8 x 45.7 cm

Spring Freshet
oil on canvas (size not given)

Smuggler's Cove
oil on canvas 66 x 81.2 cm

Still-Life with glass bottle and artist's bust
oil on Masonite 78.7 x 63.5 cm

Still Life with St. John and Quimper Pot
oil on board 60.9 x 50.8 cm

Still Life
oil on canvas 81.2 x 64.7 cm

Still Life
oil on ? 66 x 68.5 cm

Sunlit Landscape
oil on canvas 66 x 81.2 cm

Summer morning, Avenue General Le Clerc, Paris
oil on board 38.1 x 45.7 cm

Village landscape
oil on board 43.1 x 71.7 cm

View towards Pont Croix, France
oil on canvas-board 21.6 x 26 cm

Untitled landscape (washer women)
oil on canvas 50.8 x 43.1 cm

Untitled abstract
oil on board 24.1 x 19 cm

Wednesday, 2 July 2025

Abel Warshawsky - part 1

Cleveland Impressionist landscape painter, Abel Georges Warshawsky (1883-1962) left Cleveland for New York in 1905 and then spent some years in Paris as an expatriate. In 1910, he returned to Cleveland where he taught art with William Sommer and exhibited paintings continuously through the 1940s.

He was born on December 28, 1883, in Sharon, Pennsylvania, though he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He studied with Louis Rorimer at the Cleveland Art Institute, with additional work at the Art Students League, and the National Academy of Design, the latter two institutions in New York City, where Warshawsky went in 1905. The artist travelled to Paris in 1908, where he met Amedeo Modigliani, Paul Signac and Auguste Renoir, as well as American artists Winslow Homer, Leon Kroll, Hugo Robus and William Zorach.

Though he returned to Cleveland in 1910, where he was a member of the Cincinnati Art Club and taught with William Sommer, he maintained a studio in Paris for thirty years, and was quite active in the art world there. He traveled often through France and Italy, returning on a yearly basis to the United States to sell his work, exhibiting from the 1910s to the 1950s. With the death of his first wife, and war threatening in the 1930s, Warshawsky left Europe, building a studio in Monterrey, California, teaching classes, painting portraits, and figures against the backdrop of the Northern California coastline.

Warshawsky, a member and president of the Carmel Art Association, was a painting partner and friend of California artist Sidney Sargent Freeman. Warshawsky painted portraits of John W. (Jack) Raper, 1870-1950, a columnist for "The Cleveland Press" in 1940, and his brother David, 1893-1989, in 1944 in Taxco, Mexico, which are in the collection of the City Club of Cleveland. The latter was a gift to the collection by the sitter's son and his wife, David and Lee Warshawsky. Abel Warshawsky's younger brother, Alexander L. Warshawsky, 1887-1945, was also a painter.

The 1920 portrait of his wife, titled "Paris Unconquered," is set against a background vista of that city. The painting served as the frontispiece of his book of the same title, published in 1957. "Memories of an American Impressionist", a book about Abel G. Warshawsky, edited by Ben L. Bassham, was published by Kent State University Press, in 1980. Nancy Dustin Wall Moure's article, "Abel Warshawsky," appeared in Art of California, in September 1990. His work was part of the exhibition, in 2002, "The Many Faces of Cleveland: A Century of Portraiture", at the Cleveland Artists Foundation. Abel Warshawsky died in 1962. Warshawsky has five paintings in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as work in the Minneapolis Art Institute, Minnesota; Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; and the Luxembourg Museum in Paris, France.

This is part 1 of a 2-part post on the works of Abel Georges Warshawsky:

c1909 Toward San Giorgio, Venice
oil on canvas 63.5 x 81.2 cm

1911 Boats on the Seine
oil on canvas 66 x 81.3 cm

c1912 Afternoon, Brittany
oil on panel 20.3 x 25.4 cm

1917 Washerwomen at Goyen
oil on canvas 64.8 x 81.3 cm
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

c1920 Portrait of a Woman
oil on canvas 81.2 x 63.5 cm

c1920 Paris Unconquered

This portrait of the artist’s wife set against the backdrop of the city was illustrated in colour for the frontispiece for the book of the same title, written by the artist in 1957.