Joseph Leboit

Joseph Leboit’s work is a spectrum of observation of the human condition, one end being that of the happiness found in daily human activity; the other searching out the darkness hidden from view.

Born in New York City in 1907, printmaker and painter Joseph Leboit graduated from College of the City of New York, receiving the school’s Ward Medal in art. He went on to study at the Arts Student League, beginning in 1928, with Thomas Hart Benton and Kimon Nicholaedes, and, in 1938, was selected by the WPA for its Graphics division. In this program he mastered a variety of printmaking techniques, including lithography, woodcut, etching, and silkscreen; he also continued his studies oil and tempera painting.

At this time, near the onset of American participation in World War II, he became a director for Artists for Victory. With fellow directors, he organized a national exhibit entitled America in the War, which toured throughout the U.S.; Leboit contributed a series of Holocaust woodcuts for the exhibit, one of which now resides in the Library of Congress.

His work expanded to the New York publication PM, for which he created political cartoons, illustrations, and charts and maps. This work led him to commissions creating maps for the Russian War Relief and the Junior Red Cross. Meanwhile, Leboit participated in a variety art exhibitions, including his first one-man show in 1946 at the ACA Gallery in New York.

Following the war and the closing of the PM, Leboit undertook advanced studies in psychology, this in addition to continuing to paint. He became a certified psychologist and for 25 years was the director of the Advanced Center for Psychotherapy, a non-profit mental health clinic, which he co-founded. He wrote a variety of monographs on the subject of psychology and co-wrote a text still used in the field of psychotherapy today. In the 1970′s, Leboit traveled to California to paint. He eventually moved there, following a stroke in 1989. Though the stroke left his right hand slightly impaired, Leboit simply took over painting with his left, and continued exhibiting his art until his death in 2002, in Walnut Creek, California.

His work has shown at ACA Gallery in New York, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress, among others. He work resides in numerous museum collections, including the Smithsonian, Metropolitan, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Pennsylvania, and Oregon Art Museums. Solo exhibitions include the ACA Gallery in New York, and the Sunrise Fine Arts and Commonwealth Club of California galleries in San Francisco.

A Glimpse into Gustave Baumann’s Ephemera

Gustave Baumann’s name is synonymous with color woodcut.  He produced almost two hundred color woodcuts during a career spanning eight decades. Baumann’s masterful techniques evolved over the decades but his roots, his beginnings, were in the commercial art field. The disciplines of the field served him well during his career and it was in his ephemeral work where his sense of design, sense of humor, and sense of humanity shone.

St. Pauls Kirche

His early commercial commissions included the Sunday program for the April 19, 1908, service at St. Pauls Kirche in Chicago and a series of covers for The Inland Printer magazine.

The Cow Bell

Baumann was a member of the Palette and Chisel Club in Chicago and, in 1913, created the design for the banner of the club’s newsletter, The Cow Bell.

In the early 20^th century, the ex libris was as important as personal stationery and Baumann designed many over the years for collectors, friends and family.

ex libris Gustave Baumann

Early examples were etchings but Baumann soon gave up etching, preferring the less toxic technique of the woodcut.

Go West Said A Small Voice

Throughout his career Baumann carved wood blocks to create his stationery, announcements (marriage, birth, moving) and his holiday greeting cards.

The imagery of his greetings cards range from the illustrative to the whimsical.

1948 Holiday Wishes

They were a vehicle to unleash his imagination and what an imagination it was.

1950 Holiday Wishes

1915 Chicago Artists Poster

Posters also fall within ephemera and Baumann designed posters for the Palette and Chisel Club, the Indianapolis Trade Association (by the way, we would love to find an example of this 1912 poster declaring Indianapolis to be “The Heart of Trade”), the 1915 exhibition of Works by Chicago Artists, and a few for the Santa Fe Fiesta.

Bursum Bill response

When Baumann felt the need to express his opinion on a social issue he did not hesitate putting pen to paper and knife into wood, and the results were sometimes printed in the New Mexico Sentinel (see “Monumental Episode,” February 23, 1938). When the Bursum Bill threatened Indian land and water rights Baumann carved a series of woodcuts after a play produced by locals in support of the rights of Native Americans.

Cover Design, never used

1919 Indian Pottery Old and New

Ephemera also encompasses books and book design. Baumann’s involvement with books ranged from designing illustrations for an author (All the Year Round and Pirates!), to writing his text and carving blocks for illustrations (Chips an’ Shavings and Frijoles Canyon Pictographs) and to writing his text and carving the text and illustration blocks (Indian Pottery Old and New).

This part of Baumann’s oeuvre is relatively unknown by comparison to his color woodcuts but each aspect of it serves to illustrate his amazing talent and creative genius. Be sure to see our full inventory of Gustave Baumann’s works.

William E. Hentschel (1892 – 1962): Rookwood designer, Printmaker

This is a quick blog about a printmaker who developed two separate stencil printmaking techniques and had a career as a designer with Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati, Ohio.

William Ernst Hentschel was born in New York on June 16, 1892.  He studied art at the Art Students League and Columbia University in New York, the University of Kentucky, where he got his degree, and the Cincinnati Art Academy.  In 1913 Hentschel was hired as a designer at Rookwood Pottery where he worked until 1932 and produced over 4000 designs for ceramics.

ink drawing

In 1921 he also began teaching at the Cincinnati Art Academy until his retirement in 1957.  In early 1928 he developed a printmaking method that involved using an airbrush with multiple stencils.  He showed these works at the Closson Gallery in 1929, Roullier’s Gallery in Chicago in 1930 and at the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1932.  He also had an exhibit of around 40 prints at the Traxel Galleries in Cincinnati in the early ‘30s.  He began to call this technique “Aquatone.”

In 1953 Hentschel developed another innovative technique, again using stencils, but this time utilizing gelatin brayers of different sizes and softness, printing with oil-base ink (rubber rollers with water-base inks).  This is similar to what was being experimented with at Atelier 17 in New York with intaglio.  He would cut around 10 stencils to create an image.  Each print is unique with this method.  Hentschel exhibited 15 works at the Closson Gallery in 1956. Hentschel’s first wife was Russian dancer Halina Feodorova, for whom he designed a dance school in Cincinnati.  In 1939 he married former student Alza J. Stratton.

William Hentschel died in Burlington, Kentucky in June of 1962.

Gustave Baumann’s Color Woodcuts

The Annex Galleries is the representative of the Gustave Baumann estate. For the past 14 years, gallery director and co-owner Gala Chamberlain has been working on the catalogue raisonné of Baumann’s color woodcuts. She has gathered information on his early editions, books, unpublished works, and ephemera as well as related tales and anecdotes from his writing, friends, family, and collectors. Below is a brief biography of the prolific artist written by Chamberlain for the Annex Galleries, in anticipation of the impending publication.

In 1891 a steamer delivered Gustave Baumann, his parents and his siblings to the U.S. They made their way from New York to Chicago to begin a new life. Baumann was ten years old at the time but manhood was just around the corner. With the departure of his father from the family, Baumann felt the responsibility of earning a living. With an ad in hand and drawings under his arm, he knocked on the doors of the commercial engraving houses in Chicago. He was hired as an apprentice and his career in art began. A good student and a quick learner, Baumann soon figured he could make more for himself if he opened his own business. Night classes at the Art Institute fueled his desire to go back to Europe for an education that would free him from the commercial grind. In 1904 he boarded a steamer for Germany where his year of study and travel stretched to eighteen months.

He returned to Chicago in 1905 and soon after discovered Brown County, Indiana. Saving up $100. he could spend three months in Brown County, sketching and painting. He produced a portfolio of small format color woodcuts entitled In the Hills of Brown and then produced some of the largest woodcuts at that time. His work was selected for inclusion in the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition where he won the Gold Medal for Color Woodcut. In the summer and fall of 1917, Baumann traveled to Wyoming, New York, Manhattan and Provincetown, MA.

Many of his Chicago artist buddies had been to the southwest and regaled him with their stories of an exotic place named Taos. Baumann spent the summer of 1918 in Taos before visiting Santa Fe. Paul Walter, the director of the Museum of New Mexico, offered him a studio in the basement of the museum. His wanderlust was satisfied as apart from numerous sketching trips over the years he remained in Santa Fe until his death in 1971.

During his ninety years, Baumann produced woodcuts, paintings, furniture, sculpture, toys and marionettes and wrote poetry and plays. Baumann was the ultimate craftsman, as he loved the feel of the wood, the tool and the handmade paper he selected. His hands controlled every aspect of his craft: the carving of the blocks, the mixing of the inks and the printing of the blocks. Baumann’s work is held in the permanent collections of numerous public collections and he actively exhibited his work throughout his life.

Further information on Gustave Baumann can be obtained by reading Gustave Baumann: Nearer to Art by Martin Krause and David Acton and Hand of a Craftsman: The Woodcut Technique of Gustave Baumann by David Acton. — Gala Chamberlain

Be sure to see our full inventory of Gustave Baumann’s works.

Art Hazelwood: The Art of Politics/The Politics of Art

San Francisco based artist Art Hazelwood is a tour de force in the modern American printmaking world.  Inspired by political upheaval both local and national, mythology, and his world travels, Hazelwood’s work relays an unbending, unblinking, unforgiving, and beautiful tribute to comedies of error in the world around him.

Hazelwood began his studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. After graduating in 1983, he traveled throughout the U.S. and Asia, and taught English in Tokyo for a year before returning to San Francisco in 1993. He became a member of the California Society of Printmakers, working as an assistant to artist William Wolff and others, cataloging their works and organizing retrospectives. This would become a continuing interest of his; he has since organized over 20 group exhibitions and curated shows for several individual artists.
Hazelwood’s activism has also contributed to his oeuvre, having co-organized the Art of Democracy national coalition, producing more than 100 political posters and bringing together more than fifty political art shows, which took place all over the country leading up to the 2008 presidential elections. Much of his work reflects his work with homeless rights activism, and he has created several series dealing with the issues of societal problems, political unrest, and war. He does not hesitate to portray the attributes of war with tongue-in-cheek skepticism. Using an innate sense of detail, and a willingness to focus on the more laborious aspects of the medium, Hazelwood uses bookmaking as a powerful form of artistic expression, as with his interactive ‘flip-book’ titled “Exit Iraq”, or referencing Greek mythology as analogous of modern folly, as with the accordion-fold book that reaches 9′ in length when hung: “Pulcinella in Hades” . In addition to bookmaking and printmaking, Hazelwood is a tile muralist, and in 2009 he completed two mural projects, one a memorial to homeless rights activist Arnett Watson, the other as part of a program to aid children of incarcerated parents at Visitacion Valley Middle School in San Francisco. And though much of his work is influenced by his activism, there is the imagery he creates through his study of mythology, literature, and the every day.

His work can be found in several collections including the Whitney Museum of Art, New York Public Library, Library of Congress, RSDI Museum, Stanford Special Collections Library, Yale Special Collections Library, and the Achenbach Collection.

To view more of Hazelwood’s work, please visit our inventory of his works.

James D. Smillie, 1833 – 1909: A lifetime of engraving

Today’s blog features a member of the 19^th century’s most famous family of etchers, James David Smillie.

"Portrait of Self," Etching on zinc, 1900

James David Smillie first earned his reputation as an etcher, but later became equally well known for his landscape watercolors.  He began etching at age 8, learning from his father. At age 14, he did a set of plates illustrating John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost.  He had a job as a bank note engraver before he and his father started their own engraving business, specializing in bank-notes.  They also did the engravings for the 1857 Mexican Boundary Survey Report.

"Portrait of J.S. Morgan, Esq." Engraving, 1892

James David Smillie helped organize the New York Etching Club, and he was the U.S. representative to supply examples of American etchers’ work to the Painters-Etchers Society of London. Although he continued working with etching, drypoint, aquatint and lithography, in 1865, he began doing landscape painting and was especially interested in mountain scenery, and he soon traveled to California via the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  He then went on to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains, and then to the northeastern United States in the Catskills and Adirondacks.   From these trips he did illustrations and wrote the text that were published in 1872 in Picturesque America.

"Rough Sport in Yosemite" etching, 1886

"Rough Sport In Yosemite," etching, 1882, only proof.

Smillie married in 1881, and the couple had two sons.  By 1884, he was in France, and spent much time there doing prints of landscapes, figures, portraits and cityscapes.  By the late 1880’s Smillie was comfortable and began to do printmaking for himself, experimenting with different techniques of his own compositions: drypoint, mezzotint, aquatint, and soft-ground etching.

Between 1888 and 1896, he produced a set of drypoint floral still-life prints. James David Smillie founded the American Watercolor Society and served as president and treasurer.  He also taught classes at the National Academy of Design in 1868 and from 1894 to 1903.

"Hollyhocks: A Study" drypoint, 1889

A Bunch of Pansies," Drypoint, 1890

"Evening, Raquette Lake," Mezzotint, 1896

"A Gateway, Roquebrune...) Drypoint on celluloid plate, 1894

At the end of his life, after viewing a show of Joseph Pennell’s work at the Grolier Club in New York, he realized the difficulty he had transcending his precise and skillful training as a banknote engraver.  He died September 14, 1909.

"A Bit on Marblehead Neck," etching, 1883

"Ex Libris: Century Association," Etching, 1900

There are a couple of excellent publications regarding Smillie’s creative printmaking; a catalogue raisonné by Brucia Witthoft, ISBN 0-7734-9520-7 and an exhibition catalogue with an extensive checklist by Michael Schantz for the Woodmere Museum in Philadelphia in 1991.

For a further look at J.D. Smillie’s prints here is a link to our website: http://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory?q=smillie

For those who are interested the Smillie family of artisans, painters/engravers/etchers were: James H. Smillie (1807 – 1885); George Smillie (1811 – 1881); William C. Smillie (1813 – 1908); James D. Smillie (1833 – 1909); George H. Smillie (1840 – 1921); Helen (Nellie) Sheldon Smillie (1854 – 1926); and George F.C. Smillie (1854 – 1924)

"Portrait of James Smillie, 1825" etching

"Portrait of James Smillie - An Engraver" etching

"Portrait of James Smillie" etching, printed chine collé

Portrait of George H. Smillie

Sutro Baths (San Francisco): A four panel lithograph, 1886

This blog is regarding another unusual work in inventory that is too large to exhibit but is a remarkable artistic and historic work.

Sutro Baths 4 panel lithograph, 1886

This large, four panel lithograph was done by an anonymous artist for the San Francisco businessman and former mayor Adolphe Sutro who, in 1881, bought most of the western headlands of San Francisco foreseeing the growth of the city to the shore of the Pacific Ocean.

In 1886, Sutro Baths opened to a dazzled public at the astounding cost of one million dollars.  Spread over three acres, the artistic detail and engineering ingenuity were impressive: A classic Greek portal opened to a massive glass enclosure containing one fresh water tank, five salt-water tanks at various temperatures and a large salt water tank at ocean temperature. Together the pools held 1,685,000 gallons of sea water and could be filled or emptied in one hour by the high or low tides. There were 20,000 bathing suits and 40,000 towels for rent as well as slides, trapezes, springboards and a high dive for up to 1,600 bathers.  There were 517 changing rooms and a capacity for 7,400 bathers. Balmy temperatures and abundant plants enhanced “California’s Tropical Winter Garden”.

Photo of Sutro Baths

Diners could choose from three restaurants that could accommodate 1,000 people at a seating. There were natural history exhibits, galleries of sculptures, paintings, tapestries and artifacts from Aztec, Mexican, Egyptian, Syrian, Chinese and Japanese cultures. An amphitheater, seating up to 3,700 people, provided a variety of stage shows. Up to 25,000 people could easily visit the facilities each day for a mere ten cents (twenty five cents for swimming). Sutro’s dream was realized as the San Francisco populous streamed to the Baths on one of three five cent railroads connecting to the city.

For all the glamour and excitement, the success of Sutro Baths was short lived. By 1937, Adolph Sutro’s grandson realized the baths were no longer commercially successful so he converted the large tank into an ice skating rink. Sutro Baths never regained its popularity and the ice-skating revenue was not enough to maintain the enormous building. In 1966, the site was sold to land developers who began demolition so they could build high-rise apartments. A fire quickly finished the demolition work and thus ended the eighty year history of Sutro Baths.

The property was acquired in 1980 by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area for $5,500,000.00.  The foundations still remain.

The billboard was originally done to advertize the baths to the public and was posted around San Francisco. Text was added after the billboard was posted, each of the 4 sheets had to be carefully mounted. About a dozen of the posters were found in a warehouse in San Francisco in the late 1960’s.

More information can be found regarding this print on our website at: http://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory/detail/JHAE101/Unidentified/Sutro-Baths-San-Francisco