Carl Ashby, painter and printmaker, was born in Hurley, New Mexico on March 2, 1914. He worked as an artist for the Civilian Conservation Corps before attending the University of Utah, where he received his degree in 1937. He relocated to New York City shortly thereafter and married artist Estelle Grey in 1938. Ashby worked at Atelier 17 sometime between the years 1940 and 1955, and earned his MA degree from New York University in 1959. He taught at the Parsons Division of the New School at New York University for twenty-five years beginning in 1970. During his career, Ashby studied with artists Hans Hofmann, George Grosz and Morris Kantor. His works and papers are included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College.

Laurence Sisson (1928-2015)

Maine Coast

oil on board

30 x 22 inches

Patrick George (1923-2016)

Garden Gateway, 1994-98

oil on panel 

13 3/4 x 40 inches

Acquired from a William Hodgins designed home in East Hampton, NY. Hodgins acquired it for his client directly from Browse & Darby, George's longtime dealer in London. Patrick George was a landscape and figure painter of distilled emotion and intelligence. A modest man of considered opinions and dry humour, he preferred to paint at his Suffolk home rather than court the art establishment, and his visits to London were mostly made in order either to teach or to see exhibitions of other artists’ work. He eschewed self-promotion, yet his paintings are much cherished by a growing band of admirers who appreciate the formal toughness, unusual structures and sensitive colours of his subtle approach. Chief among his artist supporters was Frank Auerbach, who has described George’s painting as having “the tension of a tightrope walker. I find it engrossing and admirable.” George was at the center of 20th century British painting; a student and then colleague of William Coldstream at the Slade, a contemporary of Lucian Freud and a mentor of Euan Uglow. He was celebrated for his devotion to the particularity of things, especially trees, and English light and atmosphere, and his ability to render all this most beautifully and memorably into the language of paint. In later years he read Montaigne to help prepare himself for death, but lost none of his relish for life, continuing to paint and regularly enjoying roast lamb, good wine and whisky. His later work was looser in application but none the less effective for this.