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. 


c1920 Paris Unconquered
oil on canvas 60.9 x 50.8 cm

c1920 Le Pont de la Cité, Martigues
oil on canvas 45.7 x 55.4 cm
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

1920 Along the Canal
oil on canvas 46.2 x 55 cm

1922 Paris on Parade
oil on canvas 81.2 x 99 cm

1923 The Seine at Andelys
oil on canvas 81.3 x 99.8 cm
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

c1925 Place de l'Opera (Paris in Spring)
oil on canvas 81.2 x 64.7 cm

1926 The Rhone at Avignon
oil on board 45.7 x 54.6 cm

1926 La Pasarelle looking towards the Ile de la Cite and
Notre Dame
oil on canvas 66 x 81.5 cm

c1930 Floral still life
oil on canvas 54.6 x 45.7 cm

c1930 Exotic fish
oil on board 45.7 x 38.1 cm

c1930 Angles sur Anglin
oil on canvas 63.5 x 78.7 cm

c1933 View of Uzerche, France
oil on canvas 80.6 x 65.4 cm

1933 Le Goyen a Pont Croix
oil on board 31.5 x 39 cm

1934 Portrait of my wife
oil on canvas 81.3 x 66 cm
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
© This artwork is known to be under copyright

c1935 Road to the coast, Pont Croix-Finistère, Brittany
oil on fibreboard 38.1 x 49.5 cm
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

1938 The Rhône at Avignon, France
oil on canvas 21.6 x 26.7 cm

1938 Still life with glass bottle 
oil on canvas 81.2 x 63.5 cm

c1940s La Petit Boudoir
oil on masonite 53.9 x 44.7 cm

c1940s Highway, Carmel Valley
oil on masonite 50.8 x 60.9 cm

c1940s Flowers in a brown bowl
oil on masonite 59.7 x 49 cm

c1940s Eucalyptus Grove, Highway 1, Carmel, CA
oil on masonite 50.8 x 60.9 cm

1946 Indian Chief
oil on panel 29.5 x 25.5 cm

Note: Dates were not found for the remainder of images in these posts.


A View of the Bridge
oil on canvas 66.1 x 81.3 cm

A View of Paris (Notre Dame)
oil on canvas 81.2 x 81.2 cm

Before the wind, road to Vernay
oil on canvas 59.7 x 48.2 cm

Coastal cliffside
oil on canvas 66 x 81.2 cm

Fishing boats, Concarneau
oil on canvas 54.6 x 64.7 cm


Monday, 30 June 2025

Paul Colin - part 7

Paul Colin (1892 Nancy, France - 1985 Nogent-sur-Marne, France) was a prolific master illustrator of Decorative Art posters. A professional artist, scenographer, graphic designer and theatre painter. He specialised in theatre sets, book design and costume design. During his lifetime he created over 1900 posters and worked in theatre for more than 40 years. He was influenced by Surrealism and Cubism, typically using very exaggerated shapes, striking colours and stylised art forms in his work. He used a large palette of colours to emphasise the energy and meaning conveyed by his subjects, and his art is strongly in the style of the Art Deco movement. Many of his most famous illustrations were created for Jazz Age music and theatre. His designs incorporate jazz elements, highly stylised or caricaturised humanoids are strangely juxtaposed with geometrically overlapping objects such as Cubist collages. His own background in painting and his love of theatre helped him to become one of the most important French poster artists of the 1920s and 1930s.

For more biographical information see part 1 & for earlier works see parts 1-6 also.

This is part 7 of a 7 part series on the works of Paul Colin.

Note: Dates were not found for the remainder of this series.

Jazz Musicians charcoal on paper 27 x 21 cm:



















Les Amants de Demain
(The Lovers of Tomorrow)
colour lithograph 199 x 115 cm

Le rameur 
(The rower)
oil on cardboard 54 x 65 cm

Le Café Martin 
gouache and ink maquette 130 x 99 cm

La Volonte: La Grand Quotidien des Gauches
(The Will: The Great Daily of the Left)
colour lithograph 146 x 107.9 cm

La Granero
two colour lithograph 156 x 105 cm

Lys Gauty, Columbia records
colour lithograph 160 x 120 cm

Marianne with Stigma or Liberation
oil on canvas 92 x 65 cm

Man with raised arm
gouache on paper 40 x 30 cm

Portrait of a Professional Man
pencil & watercolour on paper 44 x 32.3 cm

Nestor Martin
colour lithograph 120.5 x 160 cm

Nude Study
charcoal on paper 64 x 49 cm

Nude
oil on canvas 81 x 60 cm

Nude lying on a sofa
ink wash on paper 55 x 73 cm

Paul Colin, Galerie La Boetie Mourlot
 colour lithograph 60.3 x 40 cm

Patriotic Shepherd
gouache on paper (size not given)

Paris Soir (Paris Evening)
watercolour, pen & ink on paper 38.1 x 31.1 cm

Personnage (Character)
gouache on paper 30 x 26 cm

Personnage (Character)
gouache on paper 26 x 21 cm
 

Personnage (Character)
gouache on paper 26 x 21 cm

Roi de Pique
(King of Spades)
gouache 36 x 23 cm

Red Nude
oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm

Red nude at the window
oil on canvas  73 x 54 cm

Reclining Nude
charcoal and grey wash 76.2 x 56.5 cm

Semaine Internationale de Solidarité
(International Solidarity Week)
colour lithograph 59 x 39 cm

Temps Present
(Present Tense)
colour lithograph 116.2 x 76.2 cm
 

Tabarin
 pencil on tracing paper 15 x 13 cm

Two Dancers
colour lithograph poster enhanced with gouache 154 x 112 cm

Tumulte noir
(Black Tumult)
colour lithograph 47 x 32 cm

Tulips and Roses
oil on board 71 x 90 cm

Woman with cigarette
pencil, gouache & wash on paper 63 x 46 cm

Josephine Baker and Band
gouache on paperboard 76.2 x 65.4 cm

Village View
oil on panel 24 x 19 cm

Valentine Tessier, Judith. Théâtre Hébertot
colour lithograph 150 x 98 cm

Woman in a hot air balloon
gouache on paper 52 x 38 cm

Untitled
watercolour on paper 55 x 46 cm

Untitled
screenprint on wove paper 27.9 x 42 cm

Untitled
lithograph 57 x 38 cm

Untitled
aquatint on paper 25.4 x 17.7 cm