Sonia Delaunay, Solar Prism, 1914

Soir Bleu, Edward Hopper, 1914

Henri Matisse

Zulma

1950

Adrien Seguin

1926- 2005

Huile sur toile

50 x 61 cm

1998

Martyr Hill

Artist: O Louis Guglielmi (American, 1906-1956)

Date: c. 1933-1934

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, United States

Description

The eerie loneliness of Louis Guglielmi's painting Martyr Hill seems surreal. Yet the Grand Army of the Republic Hall in Peterborough, New Hampshire, actually looks much as it does in this painting. Guglielmi, who spent many summers at the MacDowell artist colony in Peterborough, knew the place well. He altered the scene slightly but effectively to create an uneasy, melancholy mood reflecting the troubles of the time.

Sweeping diagonal lines draw the viewer's attention to the GAR Hall, with its spiky finials and a cannon aimed to menace the viewer. In fact, the cannon stands on the opposite side of the hall’s lawn. Guglielmi removed the windows from the hall’s side wall, creating the solid red parallelogram he placed very near the dark front wall of the house in the foreground. This causes the eye to lurch disconcertingly from foreground to background. Nothing in the painting casts a shadow - the buildings therefore look oddly insubstantial. The sculpted bronze soldier on the Civil War Memorial, his head bent in sorrow, underlines the lack of a living person in the scene. The Nubanusit River flows under a bridge and out toward the viewer, who is left with no place to stand.

Franz Kline - Untitled, 1957, oil and paper collage on canvas, 24.8 x 32.4 cm

A View of Sintra, Portugal

Artist: Cedric Morris (British, 1889-1982)

Date: 1950s

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Private Collection, UK

Description

Among the numerous places Cedric Morris visited during his extensive travels, Portugal was one of his most frequented.

Morris’ first trip to Portugal, with his partner Arthur Lett-Haines and artist-plantswoman Primrose Harley, was in 1950. He returned many times, often in the company of the plantsman Nigel Scott; these trips were primarily plant-hunting expeditions, with the purpose of finding new species of plants native to the area, to add to their full and varied plant collection back home at Benton End, Hadleigh, Suffolk. Morris had always preferred the countryside, and after the war Morris and Lett-Haines had moved to Benton End from London, which included a large house, studio and garden.

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson

"The Arrival" c.1913.

Juan Miro

Personnage devant le soleil