Seasons

WALTER KOENIGER 1881-1943

The Icy Falls

24 x 36 Oil on Linen

$7500 Framed (30 x 42)

Known as “the Painter of Snow,” Walter Koeniger was the son of an architect, born in Germany on May 6, 1881. From architecture, Walter turned to painting, while still in Germany. He studied under Eugene Gustav Dücker (1841-1916) and Eduard Karl Franz Gebhardt (1838-1925) at the Düsseldorf Academy. Dücker studied at the Imperial Art Academy of St. Petersburg and was influenced by Russian realism. Around 1912, Koeniger settled in Woodstock, New York, where he abandoned Dücker’s crisp, photographic realism for a more painterly, expressive technique. He concentrated on capturing the fleeting moods of nature during a period when the winter scene genre was rapidly rising in popularity.

Koeniger focused on views of the Catskill Mountains and wooded areas around Woodstock and Saugerties. He painted in broad, large strokes, rendering brilliant sunlight and glowing color harmonies, soft gradations of color in the sky, streams and forests. For G. Frank Muller (1925), Koeniger attempted “to convey to the beholder the rapture he experiences before nature at her best. Koeniger seizes the delight of woodland beauties and passes it on for our enjoyment.” Reportedly, Koeniger would delay the completion of a painting until the setting sun would add the proper tint of orange to the scene.

Vose Galleries featured Koeniger’s works in December of 1926. That year he began to exhibit his landscapes at the National Academy of Design where he returned in 1929, 1930, and 1931. His activities at Woodstock (where he died in 1943) are not well known; apparently he was not involved with the artists’ colony there. Koeniger was a member of the Salmagundi Club.

Sources:

Muller, G. Frank, “Koeniger, Painter of Snow,” International Studio 81 (June 1925): 210-215; Zellman, Michael David, 300 Years of American Art. Secaucus, NJ: Wellfleet Press, 1987, p. 773.

WALTER KOENIGER 1881-1943

Winter Light

27 x 34 Oil on Linen

$6500 Framed (30 x 38)

Emile Albert Gruppe (1896-1978)

Winter Stream

Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 in

Price available upon request

Born in 1896 the son of renowned tonalist painter Charles Paul Gruppe, Emile Gruppe became one of the 20^th century’s masters of New England seascapes and landscapes. In addition to being raised by an artistic father, he was also educated in art at The Hague in the Netherlands and in New York City at the National Academy of Design and The Arts Students League. He also received instruction from artists George Bridgeman, Charles Chapman, Richard Miller and John F. Carlson. Throughout his career Gruppé exhibited at the major national annuals, including those of the National Academy of Design, where he made his debut in 1915. His paintings were also shown at the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, the North Shore Art Association, the Rockport Art Association, where they won numerous awards and prizes. In 1942, he founded the Gruppe Summer School in Gloucester with his mentors.

Gruppe painted numerous works throughout his long artistic career, as many as 200 hundred oils a year. He is best known for his impressionistic landscapes of Vermont, painted figures and portraits, and especially for his Gloucester and Rockport harbor and village scenes. For the majority of his professional career, he worked and lived in Gloucester, Massachusetts, often wintering in Vermont and Florida.

During this time, Gruppé adopted a more direct and personal mode of painting in which he combined a dynamic brand of Realism with the light and atmospheric concerns of Impressionism. This later work is sought after for its distinctive, vigorous brushwork, compositional qualities and refined color values. Gruppe lived a long and prolific life, passionate about his art and about sharing the joys and skills of visual creativity with future generations. In one of his last interviews he revealed his philosophy of painting: "If you want exacting details in a painting, than you might as well look at a photograph. I make an impression on a canvas, and let one's imagination fill in the details." He died in 1978 at the age of 82 after a lifetime of painting.

Gruppe's works can be found in the Richmond Art Museum, the Hickory Museum of Art, Springville Museum of Art, Whistler House Museum of Art, and more. His works are now highly collectible and have brought dramatic prices near $60,000 at auction.

Source: AskArt.com

William Lester Stevens (American, 1888-1969)

Winter in the Berkshires

Signed "W. LESTER STEVENS N.A." l.r.

Watercolor 16 x 22, Framed 25 x 31

$2950

Born in Rockport, Massachusetts, Stevens spent four years at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts School, where he studied under Edmund Tarbell, among others. Primarily an oil painter, he also used watercolor and acrylics. He is best known for his post-impressionistic landscapes. Throughout the course of his long career, Stevens taught, first in Rockport, then at Boston University (1925-1926) and Princeton (1927-1929), and during the Depression at Grand Manan.

He was a National Academician and a member of the American Watercolor Society; a founding member of the Rockport Art Association; Springfield, MA Art League; Guild of Boston Artists; Gallery on Moors; New Haven Paint and Clay Club, CT; Gloucester Society of Art; North Shore Art Association; Boston Watercolor Club and the New York Watercolor Club. He won art awards at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC; American Watercolor Society; New Haven Paint and Clay Club; Springfield Art League; Salons of America; Washington Watercolor Club; North Shore AA; Rockport AA and more. He painted USPO murals in Dedham and Rockport, MA, the Boston City Hall, the Louisville, KY Art Museum and several schools in Boston. References: Movalli, Charles, American Artist (April 1986); Who’s Who in American Art (1947); Who Was Who in American Art (vol. 3, p. 3171-72).

Ken Knowles

Cornish Hills in Winter

20 x 24 Oil on Linen

$3850

Ken Knowles

Little Long Pond, MDI

12 x 24 Oil on Board

$2950

Ken Knowles

Wagon in Snow

20 x 24 Oil on Board

$3850

Bernard Corey (1916-2000)

Deep Snow

oil on board 9 x 12, signed Bernard Corey, l.r.

Framed Goldleaf 14x17

$3400

Bernard Corey is one of New England's most beloved landscape painters of the 20th century. He executed paintings surely en plein aire with accuracy and competence. Memberships included the Rockport Art Association, Salmagundi Club, the Guild of Boston Artists, North Shore Art Association and more. Having won over 100 awards and honors, including awards at the North Shore Art Association, Rockport Art Association, Salmagundi Club, NYC, Hudson Valley Art Association, Providence Water Color Club, Allied Artists of America and many more. He painted almost every day of his life with fellow artists in the fields, along the streams and beaches and in the mountains in and around New England. Although the artist traveled throughout the world, Paris made little impression on him. He was American through-and-through.

Bernard Corey was the "last of the old school" of traditional New England landscape painters. When he died early in 2000, the era when artists painted for ten hours a day, every day with competency came to an end. Corey's carefully painted impressionistic plein aire canvases captured the essence of nature in all four seasons. The Rockport Art Association gave Corey a retrospective exhibition (October-November 2000) saluting the artist's profound understanding of nature and painting.