🔥 Important Vintage Mid Century Modern Illustration Art Painting PROVENSEN 1958

Description: This is a visually striking and Important Vintage Mid Century Modern Illustration Art Painting, Oil on Masonite, attributed to Alice Rose Twitchell Provensen (1918 - 2018,) in collaboration with another artist known as M. Kane, which is dated to the late 1950's. This painting likely depicts a scene from the Provensens' The Iliad and the Odyssey: A Giant Golden Book, published by New York's Golden Press in 1956. This painting depicts Greek soldiers in full war regalia, recoiling in shock and awe at a lightning strike in front of them, seemingly caused by a cloaked figure in the center of the scene. My educated guess is that Provensen painted the figures, while M. Kane painted the background. I could not find any information on Kane, but perhaps you know more about them or recognize their work? This painting was likely a rare, commissioned piece by Provensen for a family member or friend. Signed and dated: "Provensen / M. Kane 58" in the lower right corner. This painting was acquired with its original Mid-Century frame, but this frame is in poor condition and is not included in the sale, unless the buyer requests it. Approximately 24 x 50 inches (including frame.) Actual artwork is approximately 16 x 42 inches. Very good condition for age, with some light scuffing and edge wear (please see photos.) Priced to Sell. Acquired in Los Angeles County, California. If you like what you see, I encourage you to make an Offer. Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks! About the Artist: Martin Provensen Born: 1916 - Chicago, IllinoisDied: 1987 - Staatsburg, New YorkKnown for: Collaborative children's book illustration Born in Chicago, Illinois on July 10, 1916, Martin Provensen moved to Los Angeles in 1936. While studying at the University of California, Los Angeles, he did model design for Walt Disney until 1942. During WWII he served in the Photo Science Laboratory of the U.S. Navy. After the war he and his artist-wife Alice Twitchell moved to New York to collaborate on book illustration and design.Provensen died in Staatsburg, New York on March 27, 1987.Exhibitions:Baltimore Museum, 1954; American Institute of Graphic Arts (NYC), 1959.Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"Interview with the artist or his/her family. Alice Rose Twitchell Provensen Born: 1918 - Chicago, IllinoisDied: 2018 - San Clemente, CaliforniaKnown for: Collaborative children's book illustration, painting Biography from the Archives of askART"Alice Provensen, a Star in the Children’s-Book World, Dies at 99," by Neil Genzlinger, May 3, 2018, Obituary, The New York TimesAlice and Martin Provensen at work in their studio in a family photograph from the 1950s. Their creative partnership of almost 40 years was famous in the world of children’s books.Alice Provensen, who illustrated and often wrote books for children for more than a half-century, helping young readers learn about animals and aviators, poems and presidents, Aesop’s fables and Chinese legends, died on April 23 in San Clemente, Calif. She was 99.Her daughter, Karen Provensen Mitchell, with whom she had lived since 2008, confirmed the death.For almost 40 years, Ms. Provensen formed half of an illustrating team that was famous in the world of children’s books. Her husband, Martin, was the other half. Together they illustrated dozens of books for young and very young readers, beginning in the 1940s, and as their careers advanced they wrote many as well.After Mr. Provensen died in 1987, Ms. Provensen was hesitant to continue her career.“When Martin died,” she told Publishers Weekly, “at first I didn’t think I would ever be able to work again.”But her daughter and an editor friend encouraged her, and she continued to write and illustrate into this decade.“Working on this and other books,” she said in 2005, when her Klondike Gold came out, “I’m not ever really alone. I always feel as though Martin is looking over my shoulder, telling me what I should do over, and letting me know what work is good.”Alice Rose Twitchell was born on Aug. 14, 1918, in Chicago. Her father, Jay, was a produce broker, and her mother, the former Kathryn Zelanus, was an interior decorator.She grew up in Chicago and Los Angeles, graduating from Hollywood High School in 1935. She studied art after that, though she did not earn a degree, instead improving her skills on her own. In 1938 she married the actor Lionel Stander; they divorced in 1942.By then she was doing animation work at Walter Lantz Productions, which had introduced its popular character Woody Woodpecker in 1940. The job would have usually been filled by a man, but she landed it, she said, because so many men were in the military. Mr. Provensen was animating Navy training films at the Walt Disney Studios nearby. They met in 1943 and married in 1944.After the war they moved to Washington, where a friend helped them break into the book-illustrating business. The first book they illustrated, the Fireside Book of Folk Songs (1947), was a hit, catching the emerging folk-music wave.They illustrated a number of volumes in the Little Golden Books series for young children.After living in New York City for a time, they bought a farm in the Hudson River Valley and started creating their own books, some of them based on their home life. The Year at Maple Hill Farm (1978) was a particularly popular title.The books they illustrated and wrote covered a wide range — educational, fictional, biographical, historical. They liked to travel to research them, and did so for the most acclaimed book they both wrote and illustrated, The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel With Louis Blériot July 25, 1909, about the French aviator who made the first flight across the English Channel. It won them the prestigious Caldecott Medal in 1984.Two years earlier, a book by Nancy Willard that they had illustrated, A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers, had won another prestigious prize, the Newbery Medal.The Provensens had similar artistic styles and tastes and worked in such a way that their individual contributions were hard to discern.“They’d just pass the illustration back and forth,” their daughter said in a 2015 interview with The Abilene Reporter-News in Texas, occasioned by an exhibition of her parents’ artwork at the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature in Abilene. “When one got frustrated, they would pass it to the other.”The Provensens’ artwork was not easily characterized. It might have a primitive sort of Americana look in one book but suggest Expressionism or Impressionism in another.“We never tried to develop a style,” Ms. Provensen said in a 2009 interview with The Orange County Register. “We tried to work with the material. You couldn’t do something from the Bible in the same style you’d do an animal book.”After her husband’s death, Ms. Provensen not only carried on but also became even more adventurous in the types of projects she undertook. That was especially evident in the first book she wrote and illustrated after his death, The Buck Stops Here: The Presidents of the United States (1990). It had an intricately illustrated page for each president that suggested his career highs and sometimes lows.“Her paintings are inventive and bold,” Christopher Buckley wrote, reviewing the book in The Washington Post. “Herbert Hoover dispensing apples to the unemployed; buck-stopping Harry Truman on the red phone against the backdrop of a Fourth-of-July-style mushroom cloud; Nixon holding unspooling reels of tape inscribed with the sad legend of his office. Thankfully, this is not a book to pull its punches.”Mr. Buckley especially admired the rhyming couplets that Ms. Provensen devised for each commander in chief in her countdown, calling them “wee masterpieces of concision that manage to boil down each president to a felicitous and memorable quiddity.” They were light, but they did not shy away from harsh realities.“Garfield, Twenty, in a station,” she wrote, “departed by assassination.” As for Richard M. Nixon: “Here’s Thirty-seven! Nixon, R., California’s tarnished star.”A 20th-anniversary edition brought the chain up to Barack Obama.In addition to her daughter, Ms. Provensen is survived by two grandsons.Ms. Provensen always played down the many accolades she earned. In 2009, when she won the Carle Honors award from the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Massachusetts, she told an interviewer, “Let’s face it, it’s not a jab in the eye with a stick.” Alice Rose Provensen (neé Twitchell; August 14, 1918 – April 23, 2018 and Martin Provensen (July 10, 1916 – March 27, 1987) were an American couple who illustrated more than 40 children's books together, 19 of which they also wrote and edited.[4] According to Alice, "we were a true collaboration. Martin and I really were one artist."Their early lives were remarkably similar. Both were born in Chicago and both moved to California when they were twelve. Both received scholarships to the Art Institute of Chicago, and both attended the University of California, though at separate campuses. After college, Alice went to work with Walter Lantz Studio, the creators of Woody Woodpecker, and Martin took work with the rival Walt Disney Studio, where he collaborated on Dumbo, Fantasia, and Pinocchio.The pair met in 1943 when Martin, working as a creator of training films for the American military, was assigned to the Walter Lantz Studio. They were married in 1944 and resettled in Washington, D.C., where they worked on war-related projects. After the war they moved to New York City where a friend helped them get their first job, illustrating The Fireside Book of Folk Songs. They illustrated several Little Golden Books including The Color Kittens by Margaret Wise Brown (1949). In 1952, Tony the Tiger, designed by Martin, debuted as a Kellogg's mascot.The Provensens were a runner-up for the 1982 Caldecott Medal as illustrators of A Visit to William Blake's Inn by Nancy Willard (who won the companion Newbery Medal). Two years later they won the Caldecott for The Glorious Flight, the story of aviator Louis Blériot, the first man to fly solo across the English Channel, which they also wrote.The annual award by U.S. professional librarians recognizes the year's "most distinguished American picture book for children". Eight of their books were named to The New York Times annual Ten Best Illustrated Books, including Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm (1974) and An Owl and Three Pussycats (1981). The couple were collaborative illustrators for Donald Waxman's Pagaents for Piano, a series of pedagogical primers.The couple lived for many years at Maple Hill Farm in Dutchess County, New York, which they portrayed in A Year at Maple Hill Farm (1978) as well as Our Animal Friends. Martin died of a heart attack on March 27, 1987, in Staatsburg.Alice continued to live and work at Maple Hill Farm, publishing solo work such as The Buck Stops Here: the Presidents of the United States (1990) and My fellow Americans: a family album (1995), two presentations of people and events from American history (juvenile nonfiction). Punch in New York, published in 1991, is considered her best solo work. The book received several honors and is dedicated to her grandson, Sean.After turning ninety, Alice made the move from her beloved rustic farm to San Clemente, California to live with her daughter, Karen Mitchell, and her family. Provensen continued working (an addition was added to her daughter's house for a studio) well into her nineties. She died only four months before her 100th birthday.Books • The Fuzzy Duckling, by Jane Werner Watson (Little Golden Book 1949) • Katie the Kitten, by Kathryn & Byron Jackson • Little Fat Policeman, by Margaret Wise Brown and Edith Thacher Hurd (Little Golden Book 1950) • Tales from the Ballet, selected by Louis Untermeyer (Golden Press, 1968) • The Mother Goose Book (Random House, 1976) • The Provensen Animal Book (Golden Press, 1952), a.k.a. The Animal Fair • A Horse and a Hound, A Goat and A Gander ~Maple Hill Farm content • Town & Country • My Little Hen (Random House, 1973) ~Maple Hill Farm content • A Child's Garden of Verses (Simon and Schuster, 1951) • Leonardo da Vinci 1984 • The Golden Bible: The New Testament (Golden Press, 1953) • The Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends by Anne Terry White (Golden Press, 1959) • Aesop's Fables (Golden Press) • The Iliad and the Odyssey (Golden Press) • What Is a Color? • The Book of Seasons (Random House) • Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense • The Provensen Book of Fairy Tales • The Color Kittens, by Margaret Wise Brown (Little Golden Books, 1949) • Alfred Lord Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade (Golden; Paul Hamlyn, 1964) — an edition of Tennyson's 1854 poem • Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm (Random House, 1974) ~Maple Hill Farm content • A Peaceable Kingdom: the Shaker abecedarius (Viking, 1978) — an edition of "Rhymes of Animals", Shaker Manifesto, July 1882 • The Year at Maple Hill Farm (Atheneum, 1978) ~Maple Hill Farm content • An Owl and Three Pussycats (Atheneum, 1981) ~Maple Hill Farm content • A Visit to William Blake's Inn: poems for innocent and experienced travelers, by Nancy Willard (Harcourt Brace, 1981) • The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot, July 25, 1909 (Viking, 1983) • The Voyage of the Ludgate Hill: travels with Robert Louis Stevenson, by Nancy Willard (Harcourt Brace, 1987) • Shaker Lane (Viking, 1987) • Come, Lord Jesus (~1965) • Funny Bunny by Rachel Learnard (Golden) • Fireside Book of Folk Songs • Fireside Book of Love Songs • Fireside Cookbook • Roses Are Red, Are Violets Blue? (Random House) • Instruments of the Orchestra, by Jane Bunche • Ten Great Plays, by William Shakespeare (Hamlyn, 1963) • Who's in the Egg? (Golden, 1970) • A Play on Words (Random House, 1970) • The Golden Serpent by Walter Dean Myers (Viking, 1980) • Birds, beasts, and the third thing: poems by D.H. Lawrence (Viking, 1982) — an edition of Lawrence's 1925 collection • Karen's Opposites (Golden, 1963) • Karen's Curiosity (Golden, 1963) • "The Old-Fashioned Cookbook" by Jan McBride Carlton (Weathervane Books, 1975)Publications by Alice Provensen since 1988 • The Buck Stops Here: the presidents of the United States (Harper & Row, 1990) • Punch in New York (Viking, 1991) ‡ • My Fellow Americans: a family album (San Diego: Browndeer Press, 1995) • Count on me (Harcourt Brace, 1998) — set of 10 board books ‡ • The Master Swordsman & The Magic Doorway: two legends from ancient China, retold and illus. Alice Provensen (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2001) ‡ • A Day in the Life of Murphy (S&S BYR, 2003) ‡ ~Maple Hill Farm content • Klondike Gold (S&S BYR, 2005) ‡Source:Alice and Martin Provensen, Wikipedia, 2018

Price: 3500 USD

Location: Orange, California

End Time: 2024-12-25T21:29:39.000Z

Shipping Cost: 45 USD

Product Images

Item Specifics

All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted

Artist: Provensen - M. Kane

Signed By: Provensen - M. Kane

Size: Large

Signed: Yes

Period: Post-War (1940-1970)

Material: Oil, Masonite

Region of Origin: California, USA

Framing: Unframed

Subject: Community Life, Disneyland, Equestrian, Figures, Horse, Horse Racing, Men, Mythology, Working Life, Greece

Type: Painting

Year of Production: 1958

Original/Licensed Reproduction: Original

Item Height: 16 in

Theme: Animals, Art, Cities & Towns, Conflicts & Wars, Continents & Countries, Cultures & Ethnicities, Famous Places, Fantasy, History, Militaria, Mythological, People, Portrait

Style: Fantasy, Figurative Art, Illustration Art, Modernism, Greek

Features: One of a Kind (OOAK)

Production Technique: Oil Painting

Country/Region of Manufacture: United States

Handmade: Yes

Item Width: 42 in

Time Period Produced: 1950-1959