Please click on the artwork for a larger image of the work. MORGAN RUSSELL (1886-1953) GARDEN OF GETHSEMENE  (St. Luke 27: 42-46) Oil/Canvas     25½X12 Original strange frame made by Morgan Russell himself. Note from Glenn Bassett:       In the late 1980s, during a trip to Montclair, NJ, in connection with my giving them the 20 years of letters from Russell to Mabel Alvarez, I also looked up Herman Cherry (subject of Mabel Alvarez’s painting “Man with a Beard”), the artist who was one of the New York group that included Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, etc.  Over lunch near his loft in Soho the fascinating Mr. Cherry told me a delightful story about this picture.  He and Russell were in Los Angeles at the same time in the early 1930s and knew each other.   One day he drove up to the house where Russell was staying, and there in the open garage facing the  street was Morgan, dressed in flowing women's clothes, high heels, his long hair falling down all over the task at hand hammering away trying to make a frame for one of his pictures.  Of course, Russell could never afford to have frames made.  Neither did he have a clue how to do it himself.  The thing turned out so badly mitered that one could see daylight around one corner of the picture.         I asked Mr. Cherry if he remembered what the picture was, and he described this one!  When I told him I had the picture and it was working its way up my priorities list for a new frame he exclaimed, Oh no!  I shouldn't remove Morgan's frame.      MORGAN RUSSELL            (b. New York City 1886-d. Broomall, PA 1953)         Morgan Russell was one of only three American painters who figured in the beginning of abstract art.  The others were Patrick Henry Bruce, who later renounced and burned his work, and Stanton Macdonald-Wright.  Russell and Macdonald-Wright invented the art movement, "Synchromism," the only art genre created by Americans, launched at Gallerie Bernheim-Jeune et Cie. in Paris in 1913.  (Art scholars have credited Russell with the original idea, after his study of color theory with the Canadian artist Ernest Percyval Tudor-Hart)  Synchromism, opposite to the usual approach to painting, relied on the use of pure color first, with form following later, if at all.        After first studying architecture in New York, Morgan Russell was a student of "Ashcan" painter Robert Henri and of Matisse.  He settled in Paris in 1906, where he soon joined the circle of artists that surrounded Gertrude and Leo Stein.  Among these artists were Picasso, Matisse, Rodin, the poet Apollinaire, and Modigliani (whose portrait of Morgan Russell was in Henry Ford II's collection at the time of Mr. Ford's death.).          Russell first exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1910, and later at the New York Armory Show (1913), Neue Kunstsalon, Munich (1913), Salon des Artistes Independents, Paris (1913), Stendahl Gallery, Los Angeles (1932), Museum of Modern Art, New York (1951 and 1976), and many others in Europe and North America before the massive Montclair (New Jersey) Museum retrospective in 1990.  The Morgan Russell archive resides at the Montclair Museum.        About 1916, Russell turned from Synchronism and returned to figurative painting and, after conversion to Roman Catholicism and a pilgrimage to Rome, included in his work some beautiful symbolic interpretations of scenes from the Bible.                                                               Russell worked under the patronage of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in the early years and later, through the 1930s, with financial assistance from his friend and fellow artist Mabel Alvarez in Beverly Hills, California.  His first wife,  Emilie Francesconi, died in the late 1930's; his second wife, Suzanne, was a niece of Claude Monet.  In his 3 January 1946 letter to Mabel Alvarez announcing their marriage the day before he mused,  "Strange you will find it that her oncle (sic) was a person named Claude Monet!  Yes, when she was a little girl in 1906 playing in his Giverney gardens, I was in Paris hot-crazy over the founder of modern painting.  Life is curious isn't it?"           It was to the Pennsylvania estate of Suzanne's daughter, Denyse, Mrs. Atwater Kent, Jr., (herself a former student of Russell's), that they retreated in 1946, after their hard war years in the tiny French village of Aigremont, Yonne, and it was there that Russell died in 1953.   Provenance of the Morgan Russell pictures offered:       Morgan Russell to Mabel Alvarez. GEORGE BAXTER (1804-1867) THE BRIDESMAID Print     #260     Published 1855 Framed in Hogarth frame with Baxter mounts. THE FRUIT GIRL OF THE ALPS Print     #333      15¼x11 in. After the French artist Huet. On Baxter mount, with his embossed title and seal. Published about 1859, just before Baxter retired. A GROUP OF 25 ILLUSTRATED PLAYER'S CIGARETTE CARDS DEPICTING ENGLISH STREET VENDORS Individually matted and framed in a single frame View larger image for details of each card. HOLY FAMILY Print     #234      Inside cover, sheet music for pianoforte as solos and duets - by William Hutchins Collcote. Music #4, 1849-1850 Framed in Hogarth frame with Baxter mounts. THE LOVERS' LETTER BOX Print     #359      Published 1856 From a painting by Jessie McLeod. Framed in Hogarth frame with Baxter mounts. THE DAY BEFORE MARRIAGE Print     #353     Published 1853 Framed in Hogarth frame with Baxter mounts. THE GARDENER'S SHED Print     #275      Published April 16, 1856 On the back: Charles Satoon/Lewis 154 V.R. From a painting by V. Bartholomew, Esq. Framed in Hogarth frame with Baxter mounts. VERONA (EVENING SCENE) Print     #328     Music Sheet Framed in Hogarth frame with Baxter mounts. BOOKS ABOUT GEORGE BAXTER:      THE PICTURE PRINTER OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, GEORGE BAXTER           by C. T. Courtney Lewis, 363 pp - J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1910        BAXTER COLOUR PRINTS, by H. George Clarke - Maggs Bros, London, 1919        THE BAXTER PRICE LIST, 1924, C. T. Courtney Lewis, London        THE BAXTER PRINT AUCTION PRICES, 1932, Compiled by J. H. Rylatt, President of the Baxter Society, London        THE PRICE GUIDE TO BAXTER PRINTS, by A. Ball & M. Martin, Antique Collectors Club, England, 1974        FINE PRINTS & GRAPHICS, California Book Auction Galleries San Francisco,                    February 26, 1977 PAUL SARKISIAN (born 1928) MASCULINE POWER Pastel/Paper     Signed OLD PROSPECTOR Pastel/Paper     Signed OLD WOMAN, NUDE Pastel/Paper     Signed AGONY Pastel/Paper QING ZHONG MING (born 15 Sept 1938, Lives in Shanghai, China) DETAILS AFTER THE MOGAO GROTTO MURALS, DUNHUANG, GANSU PROVINCE, CHINA Oil on the artist's own hand-made replica of ancient Xuan Rice Paper, painted with a technique that he invented. 27X27     Framed DETAILS AFTER THE MOGAO GROTTO MURALS, DUNHUANG, GANSU PROVINCE, CHINA Oil on the artist's own hand-made replica of ancient Xuan Rice Paper, painted with a technique that he invented. 27X27     Framed QING ZHONG MING'S Exhibitions (partial):                   East-West Contemporary Art Gallery, Chicago - November, 1986                 Illinois State University Gallery, Bloomington -Feb. 20 - March 15, 1987                 New York City - November, 1987                 Kuwait - November, 1987   * Qing is famous in China as a set designer, as well as a painter. OSAMU TSUJI, Japanese Artist (born 27 May 1943, Lives in Osaka, Japan) Available Oil Paintings FLORAL STILL LIFE Oil/Canvas     13X10 Signed SUNSET OF THE RIVER Oil/Canvas     16X12 Signed LANDSCAPE Oil/Canvas     16X12 Signed GREAT WALL OF CHINA Oil/Canvas     12X16 Signed SUNSET OF SEA Oil/Canvas     12X16 Signed HORSETAIL OF FIELD Oil/Canvas     12X16 Signed WOMAN IN NUDE Oil/Canvas     16X12 Signed WILD FLOWER Oil/Canvas     13X10 Signed