NEW YORK.- This fall, Sotheby’s in New York will offer two important American Paintings, along with a selection of American Works on Paper, and two Post-Impressionist works from the esteemed collection of Arthur G. Altschul, noted New York financier and philanthropist. The Altschul Collection will form the centerpiece of Sotheby’s December 4, 2002 American Paintings sale, including two major oils on canvas: Everett Shinn’s Footlight Flirtation and John Sloan’s Gray and Brass and several works on paper by William Glackens, Winslow Homer, Maurice Prendergast and Everett Shinn. Additionally, Sotheby’s will offer two paintings, one by Théo van Rysselberghe and the other by Maximilien Luce, in the November 5th evening sale of Impressionist and Modern Art.

Speaking of Arthur Altschul, Dara Mitchell, Head of Sotheby’s American Paintings Department, said: “One of the legendary figures in the American paintings field, Arthur Altschul belonged to a generation of collectors in the 1950s and 1960s who refocused energy and attention on American art at a time when it was not nearly as fashionable as French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Mr. Altschul formed one of the great collections of works by the Eight, by the artists of the Ashcan School and by the American Impressionists, and he influenced the generation of collectors that followed.”

As a leading figure of the Ashcan School, Everett Shinn was among the artists whose depictions of New York at the turn of the century challenged the boundaries of contemporary American painting. He was also a member of The Eight, a diverse group of independent artists led by Robert Henri and John Sloan who rebelled against the academic establishment and held a revolutionary exhibition of their own work at William Macbeth’s gallery in 1908. Painted in 1912, Footlight Flirtation depicts vaudeville, which was the most popular form of entertainment in America at the time. Shinn drew inspiration for the present work from Edgar Degas by incorporating the viewer into the audience before the stage and here, places the viewer in the second row of the theatre, immediately behind three elegant ladies with feathered hats, a man in a white tie with a walking stick and the orchestra conductor with his back to us rising above the pit. Through the spectators, the viewer cannot help but be drawn to the direct gaze of the woman on stage who lifts her dress, exposing her leg as she fixes us in her gaze and continues with her act. Footlight Flirtation is estimated to sell for $2.5/3.5 million.

John Sloan’s rise to prominence on the American art scene began with his role as a key organizer of the legendary 1908 exhibition of The Eight at Macbeth Gallery in New York. Sloan’s name also became closely associated with the small group of New York realists later dubbed the Ashcan School. A self-described “spectator of life, ” Sloan’s paintings are often remarkably intimate observations of working class New Yorkers’ everyday existence. Painted in 1907, the year which began one of the most fruitful and productive periods of Sloan’s career, Gray and Brass depicts the artist’s bas genre subject matter of everyday urban life. The painting is remarkable for its inclusion of both the rich and poor as subject matter as it illustrates four ostentatiously dressed and portly men and women riding by a park in a chauffeur-driven motor car, oblivious to the rows of poor and unemployed men arrayed on the park’s benches. Gray and Brass is estimated to sell for $2.5/3.5 million.

Among the works on paper to be offered from Mr. Altschul’s Collection is a watercolor by Maurice Prendergast, the artist widely regarded as one of America’s greatest watercolorists. Venetian Palaces on the Grand Canal was painted in 1899, a time when Prendergast reached the height of his abilities combining a richness of color and complexity of design in his vibrant views of Italy and New England. Beginning in 1898, Prendergast spent eighteen months traveling in Italy where he completed more than fifty watercolors including the present work. The magnificent frieze of Venetian architecture vividly reflected in the canal waters was ideally suited to the artist’s stylized technique in which he applied small touches of brilliant watercolor over an underlying geometric framework. In Venetian Palaces on the Grand Canal, as in his other works from this period, fluid, transparent strokes of color extend beyond the borders of well-defined pencil under-drawings. The work is estimated to sell for $700/900,000.

Winslow Homer’s Woman with Flowers was painted during the summer of 1880, a time which marked a pivotal point in the artist’s career when he began to paint seriously in watercolor. Over the thirty years after the present work was completed, Homer painted nearly 700 watercolors, and his works in that medium brought the artist his first and most lasting recognition, proving the artist’s prediction that “in the future I will live by my watercolors.” According to Gordon Hendricks, although Homer spent the majority of the summer of 1880 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Woman with Flowers was painted when Homer visited Field Point in Greenwich, Connecticut where he produced a number of watercolors depicting the same young woman as seen in the present work. Here, the artist illustrates the woman in the middle ground, giving equal importance to the landscape and the figure by treating both with similar brushwork. The work is estimated to sell for $300/400,000.

Arthur Altschul was a well-known collector of Neo-Impressionist works including an outstanding composition by the Belgian painter, Théo van Rysselberghe. Voiliers sur l’Escault was completed in 1892 during what is considered to be the high point of the artist’s career, and it demonstrates his mastery of the Divisionist or Pointillist technique that was first made popular by Seurat and Signac in the late 1880’s. This type of painting, known broadly as Neo-Impressionist, rejected the spontaneity of Impressionist brushwork and instead favored a methodical application of paint governed by the scientific principles of color theory. The work was featured in a groundbreaking exhibition in Brussels in 1893 of avant-garde artists known as Les Vingt. After Brussels it went on to Paris where it was a highlight of the famed Salon des Indépendants. This celebrated painting is estimated to sell for $1/1.5 million.

Together with Van Rysselberghe, Maximilien Luce was instrumental in refining Neo-Impressionist techniques during the 1890s and Notre-Dame is a superb example of this as he applies his paint with precise dabs, creating a glistening effect that conveys the reflection of the sunlight and the energy of the crowd. The present work, which is estimated to sell for $400/600,000, was executed in 1900-01 when the artist produced a series of oils depicting the Gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame. It was at this time that Paris was the location of the World’s Fair and Centennial Exhibition, and Luce’s composition captures the bustle of the city during this exciting period. Here, the artist has depicted the west façade of the church from a vantage on the left bank of the Seine, a view that would later be seen in paintings by Matisse and Marquet, who shared a studio with Luce and were inspired by the series. Both the work by Van Rysselberghe and the work by Luce will be sold in Sotheby’s evening sale of Impressionist Art on November 5th.