Bermudian Art

BICKNELL, Evelyn M. (1857 – 1936)

The Blossoming Tree, Bermuda
Signed lower right, "E.M. Bicknell"
Watercolour on paper
7.5 x 12 inches (19 x 30.5 cm)

Biography
Evelyn M. Bicknell was a painter born in New York City on the 14th July, 1857. She died on the 5th March, 1936. She was the wife of the artist Frank Alfred Bicknell, himself well rooted in the Art society of North America. She was a member of the New York Watercolor Society, The American Watercolor Society, The Salmagundi Club, and the National Arts Club. She exhibited at The National Academy of Design, at The Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and in Chicago and Boston, including several times at Boston Art Club. She won a prize in New York in 1906.

BROEMEL, Carl William (American, 1891 – 1984)

“In Bermuda”
Watercolor on paper
Signed lower right, “CW Broemel”
19.25 x 14 inches (48.9 cm. x 35.56 cm.) sight size
Original paper label from Carl Broemel is attached to the back of the board

Biography
Carl Broemel was noted as a watercolorist associated with the Cleveland School of artists. The son of Anna (Vlasteck) and Fred Charles Broemel, an architectural sculptor, Carl was born in Cleveland's old German district around Scovill and East 22nd St. He became the youngest student in the Cleveland School of Art, where he studied decorative design and graduated in 1909. After further study in Europe and New York, he returned to Cleveland and established a commercial art studio in the Hanna Bldg. Broemel exhibited watercolors and oils annually in the Cleveland Museum of Art May Show from 1923-40. His watercolors were also shown locally in such venues as the Webb C. Ball Co. and the Korner & Wood bookstore. In Oct. 1935 Broemel became the first supervisor of the WPA Federal Art Project's District 4 in Cleveland. Prior to his resignation in Feb. 1937, he instituted a "guild system" for his unit in which artists of varying degrees of training and accomplishment worked together in a single studio to produce art works in a cooperative manner. He then served as a regional art juror for the 1939 New York World's Fair and the following year opened a studio in New York. Moving to Sharon, Conn., he exhibited in such places as the Albany Institute of History and Art and also served as a staff artist for the U.S. Air Force. Past president of the Cleveland Society of Artists and the New York Artists Guild.

While in Europe he studied at The Royal School of Applied Arts, Munich and in New York at The Arts Students League and the prestigious National Academy of Design. He was a member of The Salmagundi Institute, The Art Guild of New York, The Cleveland Society of Artists, The Kent Art School, and The US Air Force Art Program.

He exhibited at The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Art Institute of Chicago, The American Watercolor Society, etc.

His Works can be found at The Cleveland Museum of Art, The New Britain Museum of American Art and elsewhere.

He is definitively known to have been in Bermuda in 1929.

JONES, Joe (1909 – 1963)

Bermuda Landscape
Signed in ink, lower right, “Joe Jones”
Pen and ink and wash in cream woven paper
14 x 20.125 inches (35.5 x 51 cm)

Biography
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, April 7, 1909, and died in Morristown, New Jersey, 1963, Joe Jones was a painter and lithographer. Self taught, he quit school at age fifteen to work as a house painter.

Winning his first award in 1931, Jones gained the attention of St. Louis patrons who financed his travel to the artists’ colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He began winning awards at age 22 in 1931 with his early paintings that are typical Midwestern Regionalist works depicting wheat fields and wheat farming.

A political activist as well as a painter, Jones organized art classes for unemployed youngsters, which he held in the old St. Louis courthouse in 1934. He alienated his supporters with the pronouncement that he had joined the Communist Party, so Jones signed up for the Public Works of Art Project in 1934.

He left St. Louis in 1935 to pursue his art career in New York. In 1937, he was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship to create a pictorial record of conditions in the dust bowl. That same year, his work was included in a major 119 exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, PA.

Through the period of the WPA Jones was awarded five major mural commissions. As a result, he created murals for the post offices at Seneca, Kansas, Men and Wheat (1940); Anthony, Kansas, Turning a Corner (1939); Hutchinson, Kansas; Magnolia, Arkansas; and Charleston, Missouri.

During World War II he worked as a war artist for Life magazine. Because Jones addressed major political and social issues in so many of his paintings, he is typically cited as a Social Realist as well as a Regionalist. His style changed in the late 1940s to minimal and non-representational. He also worked as an instructor at St. Bernards School for Boys, Ralston, NJ.

AWARDS:
Baldwin Portrait Prize, 1931; Spaeth Prize, Modern Painting, 1932; Healy Prize lithograph, 1932; Guild prize, “Best Work of Art,” 1933, St. Louis Art Guild; honorable mention, 27th Annual Exhibition of Paintings by American Artists; St. Louis City Museum, 1932; Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 1937.

COLLECTIONS:
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Whitney Museum of American Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Worcester Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; Toledo Museum of Art; Walker Art Center; St. Louis Art Museum; Library of Congress; University of Nebraska; U.S. Army; Standard Oil Co.; Mural in American Export Lines ships.

MEMBERSHIPS:
John Reed Club; National Society of Mural Painters; Ste. Genevieve Art Colony.

OLSEN, Herbert.

Tucker’s Town, Bermuda
Signed lower right, “Herb Olsen A. N. A.” and inscribed, “Bermuda”
Watercolour on paper
15 x 22 inches (38.35 x 55.9 cm)

PROVENANCE:
Estate of the artist, USA

Biography
Herbert Olsen was born in Chicago in 1905, he studied at the Art Institute and the American Academy of Arts in Chicago and taught there for 10 years. He later moved to Westport, Connecticut where he lived until he passed away. He conducted his famous art lessons from his studio which was located there as well.

He was a member of the American Watercolor Society, Philadelphia Watercolor Club, Baltimore Watercolor Society, National Academy of Design and many other important art associations.

He is listed in International Who’s Who and Who’s Who in American Art. He had many one man shows and his work has been exhibited in every major museum in the U.S. He won over 70 awards including First Prize at the National Academy of Design 1951; A Gold Medal from the Hudson Valley Art Association in 1963 and 1962; Both Gold and Silver Medals at the National Swedish American Art Association in 1951–53; First Prize in Springville, Utah for the National Invitational Exhibit in 1960–1965; the Edwin Palmer Award of $1000.00 at National Academy of Design in 1964; The First Prize from the Salamagundi Club; the Benton Bowles Purchase Award from the American Watercolor Society; a First Prize, All New England Show, Silvermine, Connecticut; Twice purchased by the Ranger Fund, National Academy of Design.

In 1966 Herbert Olsen was chosen as one of the 58 Living American watercolorist represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition covering 200 years of Watercolor painting in America.

He wrote five books one considered outstanding in its field: Olsen’s Guide to Watercolor Landscape, 1965; Painting Children in Watercolor, 1960; Painting the Figure in Watercolor, 1958; and Watercolor Made Easy, 1955.

SENAT, Prosper, L. (1852 – 1925)

Along the Road, Bermuda
Signed, "Proser L. Senat," inscribed, "Bermuda," and dated 1908
Gouache on paper
23 x 31 inches (58.5 x 78.8 cm)

Biography
Prosper Louis Senat was a painter, born in Germantown, Philadelphia in 1852. Senat studied in Philadelphia, in New York, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under E.L.Hampton, and at the South Kensington School in London under Gerome. His speciality was to paint landscapes in watercolor and for years in Europe he painted the coast-lines of Cornwall & Brittany as well as painting on the coast of Maine. Primarily associated with the East Coast, he was a resident of Pasadena in 1905–10. He died in Germantown, Philadelphia in September 1925.

He exhibited both at national and international levels in his lifetime including at The Brussels Exposition in 1880, at The Naples National Exposition in 1889, at The Vienna National Exhibition in 1893, in Chicago in 1893, in Atlanta in 1895, and also at the Colombian Exhibition. At the expositions in Chicago and in Atlanta on both occasions he won medals. Senat was a member of The Salmagundi Club, The Art Club of Philadelphia, and The Philadelphia Society of Artist, and The Artists' Fund Society. Examples of his work can be found at The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Delaware Art Museum and The Joslyn Art Museum. Senat and his wife were frequent visitors to Bermuda in the early 1900’s. During their visits to the island they stayed at the Princess Hotel where Senat exhibited his work on numerous occasions.

In a local Bermudian newspaper (Royal Gazette, April 7 1908) the following advertisement appeared:

Final Exhibition of Mr. Senat’s Bermuda Water Colors

Mr. Prosper L. Senat, who is returning, with Mrs Senat on Saturday next, will make a final exhibition of his winter’s work, at the Hotel Hamilton tomorrow, Wednesday, 8^th inst., from 10am until 6:30pm.

In addition to the watercolors remaining un-sold there will be shown most of those already disposed of, which it is his custom to take to the States for delivery, together with a large and interesting collection of Black and White compositions which it is Mr. Senat’s custom to make a preliminary to his more important works, and seldom seen out of his studios.

In fact we now know that Senat worked in Bermuda many more times after this supposed "final exhibition". He is known to have executed works up umtil the early 1920s and it is probable that these too were exhibited.

Additionally, according to a catalogue from The Bermuda Society of Arts entitled, “Loan Exhibition from Private Collections, July 27th – August 30th, 1963.”

TURNER, ROSS STERLING (1847 – 1915)
Bermuda
Signed lower left, “Ross Turner”
Inscribed centre left, “Bermuda”
Watercolour and body-colour on paper
9 ¼ x 13 ¼ inches (23.5 x 33.75 cm)

Biography
Ross Turner was born on June 29th, 1847 in Westport, New York. He was recognised as a superior watercolourist and painter, particularly in the areas of landscape and figure painting. When he was a child, his family relocated from Westport to Williamsport, Pennsylvania. After an early career as a mechanical draughtsman with the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C., Turner began painting in 1873.

In 1876 Turner travelled to Europe, ultimately bound for Germany. Once in Munich, he enrolled at the Royal Academy and studied with Karl von Piloty. Eventually he became part of the circle that gathered around the American Frank Duveneck. Although not officially a student of Duveneck’s, Turner was considered one of his “boys”; others in the group included William M. Chase, Walter Shirlaw, and Frank J. Currier. Like them Turner developed a thick, painterly, realist style. In particular, he was greatly influenced by Currier, and did a portrait of him which is now in a private collection. Turner also struck up a friendship with Constantin Bolonaci (1837–?), a Greek painter whose marine subject matter influenced his work.

In 1879, 1880 and 1881 Turner travelled to Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples with various members of the Duveneck fraternity, including Joseph de Camp and Charles Mills. quo;s work became increasingly concerned with the effects of colour and light as shown in his atmospheric harbour scenes, views of Venetian canals, and later, in his Bermuda landscapes. Turner returned to Boston in the spring of 1882, and soon became an important member of Celia Thaxter’s art colony on Appledore Island, where he was almost certainly a member of the inner circle. The warm summer days were spent painting alongside highly regarded American painters including Childe Hassam, J. Appleton Brown and Arthur Quartley. Along with Childe Hassam and J. Appleton Brown, he was allowed to build his own studio on Appledore Island. Hassam’s influence is readily apparent in the short, colourful brushstrokes exhibited in Turner’s A Garden is a Sea of Flowers, in the collection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

In 1885 Turner married Louise Blaney, the older sister of the artist Dwight Blaney (1865–1944), and the couple settled in Salem, Massachusetts. A strong friendship developed between Ross Turner and Dwight Blaney. Records indicate that Ross Turner, Louise Blaney and Dwight Blaney were together in Bermuda in the 1890’s (possibly 1895) or the early 1900’s; furthermore, it is probable that Turner visited Bermuda more than on this one occasion . During the 1890’s this circle of friends had expanded to include George C. Wales, John Leslie Breck and Joseph Decamp. Breck had first painted with Turner in East Goucester in September, 1885 and five years later after his return from Giverny painted in Turner’s own garden in Salem. Blaney and Wales had been architectural draughtsmen at the Boston firm of Peabody and Stearns; Blaney, Breck and DeCamp were members of the St. Botolph Club where Turner exhibited. Turner frequently commuted to Boston, where he maintained a studio and also taught, both at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Normal Art School. Turner also had a studio in Wilton, New Hampshire, and spent his summers there.

In December of 1890, Turner was among the artists who participated in what was perhaps the first group exhibition held at the Harcourt Studios in Boston. At this writing, the 1890 exhibition is the only evidence of Turner’s presence in the Harcourt Building. Turner was a member of the Boston Art Club (Vice President), the Boston Watercolor Club, the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts, the American Watercolor Society, the New York Watercolor Club, and the Copley Society. In addition to exhibiting his pictures at these organisations, he also showed his pictures annually at the influential Boston gallery Doll and Richards, which supported noteworthy painters such as Winslow Homer, J. Appleton Brown, Francis Hopkinson Smith and Charles H. Davis. He also exhibited at the Boston Art Club, the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from1882 to 1902, and the Art Institute of Chicago from 1895 to 1913. He won prizes at the National Academy of Design in 1886 and the American Watercolor Society in 1908, and a silver medal at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, NY in 1901. He became a charter member of the Guild of Boston Artists in 1913.

Turner was the author of such books as “Art for the Eye”, “School Room Decorations” and others. He travelled frequently in search of new subject matter. He died on February 12, 1915 in Nassau, Bahamas.