Bert Gallery – Studio Sale 2024
Tuesday Feb 27, 2024 6pm est
Providence, RI 401-751-2628
www.bertgallerynow.com

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Bert Gallery will present the Bert Gallery Studio Sale: Historic, Modern & Highlights from the Providence School on Tuesday, February 27, at 6 pm ET on LiveAuctioneers. “What better way to celebrate the end of February,” said gallery owner Catherine Little Bert. “It is exciting to increase the gallery outreach beyond 24 Bridge Street in Providence to a wider audience online with a dedicated artwork online auction. Welcome to all our new patrons from across the United States.”

The sale brings artworks to market for the collector or dealer who seeks accomplished artists with well-established exhibition and museum records. Each painting is well documented with extensive written descriptions allowing buyers to discover some new names in American Art.

This auction features a wide array of artistic styles and periods in the art history timeline. There are progressive artists from Rhode Island School of Design, such as ceramicist Constance Leslie and African American printmaker Joseph Norman. Yale Modernist Walter Feldman, who studied under Josef Albers and Wilhelm De Kooning, along with women Modernists, such as RISD-trained Florence Leif and Swedish painter Elsa Björk-Liselius are included. Folk painter and beloved Providence artist Maxwell Mays has three works in the auction, and the sleek 1940s figural masters from the New York Art Students League, Louise Marianetti and James Drummond Herbert, contribute watercolors of sassy showgirls and fashion models for sale. Works by the ever-popular Rockport Art Association artist Antonio Cirino along with a trademark harbor scene of Cape Ann by B.J. Howard and Edmund Darch Lewis are in this auction.

The core of artists in the auction are from the Providence School and Nineteenth Century American artists. Providence boasts a deep cultural heritage that is uncommon in a modest-sized American city. Its deep artistic roots were established in 1878 with the foundation of a remarkable art school, Rhode Island School of Design, and a strong independent art club, the Providence Art Club, in 1880, third oldest continually operating art club in America. It was the first art club in the United States to admit women as members and one of its founders was the Black American artist Edward Bannister. Works by the founding members of the Providence Art Club and early instructors at RISD include George Whitaker, S.R. Burleigh, George Hays and F. Usher DeVoll.

Works by other artists of note include a rare etching by Frank Benson of “Herons at Rest,” an oil by Paul Bernard King of a Paris Park scene, an Edmund Darch Lewis watercolor of Northeast Cape Ann, Mass., 1901, are in the auction as well. Works by the renowned Bauhaus Modernist Margarete Koehler-Bittkow, who shared a lifetime art friendship with Albers, Feininger and Klee, all forced to flee their German homeland to America in the 1930s, are also included. A special addition to the sale is a selection of “Attic Sale” works. These odds and ends are offered with no reserve from Bert Gallery estate collections.

All bidding for the auction takes place online through the LiveAuctioneers platform.

The gallery is located along the Providence waterfront at Corliss Landing, 24 Bridge Street. For more information www.bertgallerynow.com or 401-751-2628.