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Artist
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Title | Thumbnail |
Notes old |
Media |
Signature status |
| Louis Oscar (L.O.) Griffith |
Shaded Barn |
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This etching was featured in our weekly email on 8/29/14 along with the following gallery comments:
Louis Oscar Griffith (‘L.O.’ per his signature and ‘Griff’ to his friends) began visiting Brown County in the early 1910s and left his gig as a commercial artist in Chicago to move there permanently in the early 1920s. He was very accomplished as both a painter and a printmaker and produced over 300 copper plate etchings throughout his career. Shaded Barn (our title) is a very nice example of Griffith's Brown County subject matter. Full of the drama in the tree and that long, afternoon shadow cast onto the adjacent barn. This is a closed editon print (e.g. 30/75) – not typical of his black and white etchings. The paper is in great shape with little to no toning and it’s housed in all-acid free materials and a vintage-look frame that stays out of the way yet complements the piece well. Brown County all the way by one of the beloved artists, who visted, painted, relocated and stayed the rest of their lives in the peaceful art community of Nashville, Indiana.
-Curt Churchman |
Etching on Paper |
Signed Lower Right |
| Anthony Buchta |
Home From the Fishing Trip - Gloucester, Mass |
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Gouache on Paper |
Signed Lower Right |
| Edward K. (E.K.) Williams |
Along the Shanties |
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SOLD |
Watercolor on Paper |
Signed Lower Left |
| Emabelle (Em.) Flanagan |
Holiday Park Twins |
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SOLD
This painting was featured in our weekly email on 9/12/14 along with the following gallery comments:
Emabelle Flanagan (almost always going by 'Em') graduated from Jefferson H.S. in Lafayette, IN and lived and painted most of her life in central Indiana. In the vintage context, she’s a little under the radar but I love her mid-century, loose yet painterly approach to her work. Think Derk Smit and Dorothy Franz in terms of style (a bit under the radar themselves). Holiday Park Twins is a really nice example and it’s Holiday Park, an Indianapolis fixture. (Nice article on history of Holiday Park’s ruins, here. Friends of Holiday Park current improvement initiative, here. ) Love the local subject matter! A very competent work by an oft-overlooked Indiana artist.
-Curt Churchman |
Oil on Board |
Signed Lower Right |
| C. Curry Bohm |
Hills o' Winter |
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Oil on Board |
Signed Lower Left |
| Anthony Buchta |
Winter Witcheries |
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SOLD
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This painting was featured in our weekly email on 12/12/14 along with the following gallery comments:
We seem to have an affinity for the work of Anthony Buchta. If you didn’t already know that a quick visit to his Fine Estate page shows the over fifty pieces that we’ve had over the years. This week’s painting of the moment, Winter Witcheries, is a charming example. Buchta jumped back and forth between illustrative type work and more painterly work and this piece falls into the latter category. A lovely winter evening featuring a Brown County farmstead, it’s infused with detail and dramatic shadowing. I love the square-ish size and it’s housed in the very nice original frame. One of the better Buchta works that we’ve had recently and it’s right in season!
- Curt Churchman, Fine Estate Art |
Oil on Board |
Signed Lower Right |
| John (Jan) Zwara |
Alpine Landscape #1 |
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Gouache on Board |
Signed Lower Right |
| John (Jan) Zwara |
Alpine Landscape #2 |
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Gouache on Board |
Signed Lower Right |
| George Herbert Baker |
Oregon Farmstead |
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Mixed Media on Paper |
Signed Lower Left |
| Robert Marshall Root |
Over the Hill to the River |
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This Root painting was featured in our weekly email on 5/30/14 along with the following gallery comments:
Robert Root is indelibly associated with Shelbyville, IL but made frequent trips to Brown County with fellow Eastern Illinois artist Paul Turner Sargent. There he enjoyed the collegiality of the Nashville art scene as can be seen in the 1927 Frank Hohenberger photo (below). Much of Root’s output was watercolor and pastel. Over the Hill to the River (1922) is a somewhat rare oil example and a beautiful rendering of an apparently familiar Root painting spot. This same scape, featuring a couple maples and fencerow appears in other works by Root. The artist’s tonalist skills are showcased with his beautiful treatment of light dancing on the autumn landscape. The painting is in pristine condition with no in-painting, it’s been cleaned and revarnished and it’s housed in a handmade period reproduction frame (our work) and hand-leafed and finished to be sympathetic to the beautiful painting. An historically significant painting by one of Nashville’s orbit of early artists.
– Curt Churchman, Fine Estate Art |
Oil on Board |
Signed Lower Left |
| Gianni Cilfone |
The Gardeners |
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This Cilfone painting was featured in our weekly email on 6/13/14 along with the following gallery comments:
Gianni Cilfone was a Chicago/Park Ridge, IL-based artist who was a frequent visitor to Nashville, IN and exhibitor in the Hoosier Salon where he won four awards over a ten year period. In addition to his largely landscape output, he was a teacher and frequent lecturer on painting technique. There is an excellent article in Palette Talk, by Cilfone in which he discusses his technique in depth. This week’s Painting of the Moment, The Gardeners, is a fantastic example of his work. A classic scene, hands working in the field, rendered in representative Cilfone style – very loose and impressionistic. The painting is in flawless condition and has been re-presented in a period reproduction frame (original frame is available though kinda weird). Cilfone’s title and date (1978) appear verso and also on the backing from the original set-up (included with the piece). In addition, an original studio label listing awards and distinctions is included. We’ve had many nice Cilfone pieces over the years and though small, this ranks up there with the best of them. A wonderful composition and such classic subject matter all brought to bear with Cilfone’s masterful approach to painting.
– Curt Churchman, Fine Estate Art |
Oil on Board |
Signed Lower Left |
| Lois Davis |
Hurry Up To Wait |
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SOLD
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This Davis artwork was featured in our weekly email on 7/11/14 along with the following gallery comments:
Lois Davis is one of the few artists we deal in at Fine Estate who is still living! A good thing for her and us. She was married to fellow Hoosier artist and Prix de Rome winner Harry Davis and lived just up the road from Fine Estate in Broad Ripple. Her work is very consistent -- nearly always containing figures and representing a subtle (or not so subtle) social commentary. Hurry Up to Wait is no exception. Rendered in watercolor and ink it features a mother with her daughter doting on her doll. Sympathetic, as her work often is and beyond the focus, populated by several more background figures. A very nice, whimsical example of her output. The piece is archivally framed and ready to hang. A modestly priced and nicely representative example by an important Indiana artist.
– Curt Churchman, Fine Estate Art |
Mixed Media on Paper |
Signed Lower Left |
| John Elwood Bundy |
Richmond Autumn Landscape |
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This Bundy watercolor was featured in our weekly email on 7/18/14 along with the following gallery comments:
Bundy’s arrival in Richmond, IN in 1888 at age thirty-four signaled a change in his artistic direction. He’d previously focused on portraiture but arriving to lead art studies at Earlham College coincided with his transition to a landscape painter working in both the studio and plein air. He was considered the ‘dean’ of the Richmond School – the elder artist to many, many great painters who improbably worked in Richmond, Centerville and surrounding Eastern Indiana in the early twentieth century. Richmond Autumn Landscape (our title), an 1899 watercolor, is a nice example of Bundy’s work. Nineteenth century Bundy works are relatively rare. As was often the case, he’s given us a beautiful vista -- largely natural and devoid of the mark of man. A steady example from one of the great Indiana -- nay, great American painters...
– Curt Churchman, Fine Estate Art |
Watercolor on Paper |
Signed Lower Left |
| Glenn Cooper Henshaw |
Venice |
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This Henshaw pastel was featured in our weekly email on 7/31/14 along with the following gallery comments:
Glenn Cooper Henshaw is known mostly for his pastels, of which there are thousands – he was vastly prolific. Oils are less common but do exist in some number. Henshaw spent the bulk of his career in New York but he didn’t sit still – his settings range all over the western world – Paris, London, Venice, Chicago, Brown County, Boston, Baltimore, Indianapolis, etc. All the hot spots.
Venice is about as sexy as it gets. An ethereal pastel looking down an iconic Venetian waterway with the arched walkways and gondolas punctuating the scene moving the eye down the narrow corridor of the canal. Completely evocative of the shadowy, watery charm of Venice. A relatively large Henshaw piece and very desirable subject matter from an Indiana artist who traveled the globe for his subject matter.
– Curt Churchman, Fine Estate Art |
Pastel on Paper |
Signed Lower Right |
| Marie Goth |
Still Life with Roses |
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SOLD
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This Marie Goth painting was featured in our weekly email on 8/8/14 along with the following gallery comments:
After returning from New York where she studied under the renowned Frank DuMond at the Art Students League, Marie Goth was briefly back home in Indianapolis and in 1923 moved to Brown County where she spent the rest of her life. She was largely a portrait artist and painted many sitting Indiana governors in addition to the well-placed and well-to-do across the state and beyond. As a result of being a portraitist, there don’t exist many landscapes and still lifes -- which were typical output for almost every other Brown Country artist. Here on offer is one of those relatively scarce non-portraits, Still Life with Roses. A lovely, soft composition rendered in a loose and sympathetic style. The painting is clean and ready to hang. It’s housed in a vintage Brown County frame not original to the piece. In fact, this frame had been on an Ada Shulz we sold years ago (I don’t believe it was original to the Ada either). Beautiful painting and fun, period frame married together for your approval.
– Curt Churchman, Fine Estate Art |
Oil on Canvas |
Signed Lower Right |
| William Frederick Kaeser |
Fishin' |
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Oil on Board |
Signed Lower Right |
| George Herbert Baker |
Coastline |
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This work was featured in our 2nd Annual Curated Sale of Historic Indiana Art, April 8th, 2018 at the Indianapolis Art Center.
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Oil on Board |
Signed Lower Left |
| Dale (Philip) Bessire |
Clouded Hills |
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This Bessire painting was featured in our weekly email on 2/21/14 along with the following gallery comments:
Dale Bessire was a ‘second generation’ Nashville artist most known for executing gentle landscapes featuring local Brown County hills and vistas. He’s out of that paradigm with this pleasant example of what we believe is the Smoky Mountains. This wonderful, bright palette and a breezy rendering reflects Bessire’s skills. Great companion piece to another Bessire or a painting which stands nicely on its own.
– Curt Churchman, Fine Estate Art |
Oil on Board |
Signed Lower Left |
| Evalyn Gertrude James |
Silver and Gold |
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This Evalyn James painting was featured in our weekly email on 2/28/13 along with the following gallery comments:
Evalyn Gertrude James hails from Brazil, IN – my dear mother’s hometown. And by all anecdotal accounts was slightly eccentric. Several site visitors over the years have relayed similar stories, this from a visitor in 2008:
"I grew up in Brazil, Indiana and my sister and I took art lessons from Ms. James at the old Davis hotel in the 1950's. It was my mother who also was a artist who wanted me to take lessons from Ms. James. My mom also took lessons and painted many pictures based upon Ms. James teaching . My mom wanted me to become an artist. I wasn't very good, not much interested, and didn't take lessons much more than a year or so.
"Ms. James studio in the Davis Hotel was in the hotel ballroom. I remember lots of paintings all around the room on the floor leaned up against the walls. My parents had a very large picture, about 4 foot by 3 foot by Ms. James that hung over our couch in our living room in Brazil for more than thirty years.
"Ms. James was a somewhat of a hermit like person who lived in a very rustic cabin on the west side of town in the woods. You would see her walking home carrying her stuff along the road all the time."
And from another visitor in 2009: "Ms. James lived down the road from us. She was for lack of a better word, 'odd.' "
So she was crazy – I seem drawn to crazy. She always represented her degrees on studio labels. ‘Evalyn Gertrude James, A.B. A.M.’. Lest we should forget.
Here we have a nice example of her work dating to 1943. Visceral, full of impasto and bright colors. Silver and Gold represents James at her best. Crazy. Obviously crazy.
– Curt Churchman, Fine Estate Art |
Oil on Board |
Signed Lower Right |
| George Herbert Baker |
Richmond Bridge |
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Watercolor on Paper |
Signed Lower Right |
