Newly aquired & on offer:  works by Lillian Genth, Richard Ranft, Henri Matisse, Hayley Lever, Harry Hoffman, F. Luis Mora, and others!

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Jamie Lomas was clearly on Kym Marsh’s mind as she celebrated her hen do in Marbella (Picture: Solarpix)

The Coronation Street actress has been enjoying a long weekend in Puerto Banus where she has been partying hard with friends and family.

The mother-of-three is celebrating her upcoming nuptials with the likes of Corrie co-star Shobna Gulati, former Emmerdale star Sheree Murphy and her future sister-in-law and Emmerdale actress Charley Webb.

The actress was dolled up in the usual attire (Picture: Twitter)

Obligatory L plates…check! (Picture: Sheree Murphy/Twitter)

The girls have ensured they give Kim a big send off and the usual L plates, satin sash, veil and plastic tiara have made their obligatory hen do appearance.

And it would seem all has gone to plan as the former Hear’Say singer has had the time of her life in the Spanish resort.

The girls have been sunning themselves in Puerto Banus all weekend (Picture: Kym Marsh/Twitter)

She tweeted this morning: ‘Had THE most amazing weekend thanks to the best friends and family a girl could wish for!! Love you all more than the world xxx’But no doubt she will be looking forward to getting home to Jamie and her kids, who she has been missing ever since the trip began.

Corrie star Shobna Gulati was in tow (Picture: Charlie Webb/Twitter)

She tweeted on Saturday: ‘Having an AMAZING time for my hen do! Just got back from a fab day in the sun, now gettin ready to Party party! Missing my j and babas tho!’

Kym and Jamie have been dating for four years and are due to tie the knot in September at the Nunsmere Hall Hotel in Cheshire.

The happy couple are due to tie the knot in September (Picture: Bigpicturesphoto.com)

The couple have a 16-month-old daughter together and Kym is also mother to Emily, 14, and David, 17, with ex-boyfriend Dave Cunliffe.

Lomas, who was forced to deny reports he cheated on Kym earlier in the year, has six-year-old Billy from his previous relationship with Hayley Lever.

Excited Sky is based on a painting by Hayley Lever, “The Allegheny in 1923.” Materials used: fabrics, antique lace, silk cord. Methods: free motion quilting, hand embroidery. Size 19 x 22 framed.  On the right is where the David L Lawrence Convention Center is today. This was created for a customer, and it is already hanging on her wall.  She reports that she is enjoying it a lot!

Hayley Lever (1875-1958), "Storm, St. Ives," 1910s, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 inches

Before immigrating to America, Hayley Lever lived and worked in St. Ives, on England’s Cornish seacoast.  His decision to make St. Ives his home is not surprising, for it was a quaint fishing village and holiday resort situated on a sloping hill leading to the sea. St. Ives was also one of England’s most popular artists’ colonies. To be sure, established during the early 1880s, the town attracted a coterie of British Impressionist and pleinairists that included such well known figures as Julius Olsson and Algernon Talmage, who were drawn to the clean beaches, busy harbor, and rugged moorland scenery, as well as to the simple way of life they encountered there. By the mid-1880s, Americans such as Edward Simmons and Howard Russell Butler were working in St. Ives, and a decade later, the colony was attracting the likes of Ernest Lawson, Gardner Symons, Walter Elmer Schofield, and Paul Dougherty, among other celebrated landscape and marine painters from the United States.

During his years in St. Ives-he was there from the late 1890s until 1912-Lever painted the town and its harbor throughout the seasons and under varying climatic conditions, working “when the tide was out and when it was in, at all hours; sunrise, midday, sunset and moonlight.”^[1] He subsequently established a notable reputation in international art circles for his Cornish marines which, according to one critic, “stand out with heroic force and arrest the attention for their splendid colour, simple treatment and deft arrangement of masses.” ^[2]

These words would surely apply to Storm, St.Ives, in which Lever presents us with a view looking over the top of Smeaton’s Pier toward the town. The aerial perspective and sharp foreshortening truncates the view, emphasizing the zigzag shape of the pier’s Victoria extension. As the title of the work indicates, a storm is underway. Usually rising high from the water, the jetty is under siege, with the water rushing over the pier at its far end, so that the lighthouse at its extremity almost appears to be in the water. Figures on the pier stand in lines as if in amazement at the impact of the raised level of the water. The waves are full, pounding the far shore. By contrast, the houses, painted with angularized contours have a sturdy, solid, and staid appearance, as if to suggest that such storms had been present before, and the townsfolk are ready and used to them. Boats in the harbor are also docked quietly. Viewed from above, they seem to look up at us, as if to say that they, too, are waiting eagerly for the storm to subside so as to be back on the water.

Just as Lever’s Cornish pictures had been vital in establishing his reputation abroad, they performed a similar role in America; the artist exhibited them in many of his solo exhibitions and in the national annuals, winning over critics as well as prominent collectors, such as Duncan Phillips. Certainly Storm, St. Ives has the “vigor and sincerity” that, as perceived by one contemporary commentator, “make an irresistible appeal to the modern spirit.”^[3] Striking in the directness and simplicity of its treatment, its exquisite coloration, and its fine sense of compositional design, this work captures the distinctive spirit of St. Ives and its harbor, and attests to Lever’s reputation as a keen observer of his surroundings.

[1] Helen Wright, “A Visit to Hayley Lever’s Studio,” International Studio 70 (May 1920): lxx.

[2] W[illiam] H. [de B.] N[elson], “A Painter of Harbours: Hayley Lever,” International Studio 52 (May 1914).

[3] Exhibition of Paintings by Mr. Hayley Lever, exh. cat. (Rochester, N.Y.: Memorial Art Gallery, 1914), p. [3].

©The essay herein is the property of Spanierman Gallery, LLC and is copyrighted by Spanierman Gallery, LLC. It may not be reproduced without written permission from Spanierman Gallery, LLC nor shown or communicated to anyone without due credit being given to Spanierman Gallery, LLC.

See Spanierman Gallery’s Artists in Inventory for more paintings by Hayley Lever

David Johnson, "Landscape (White Mansion in the Distance)," 1863, oil on canvas, 18 x 28 inches

Lisa N. Peters

Last year the Collector’s Club of the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences of West Virginia (Charleston) visited the gallery and a lively dialogue ensued as members considered possible acquisitions with the gallery’s associate director Gina Greer.   This interchange was the impetus for Art, Nature, and the American City, 1840-1955, an exhibition the gallery has lent to the Clay Center that opened July 16 and will remain on view through October 10.

Including over eighty paintings and works on paper, the show raises many fascinating questions with regard to attitudes, as manifested through art, about the American city and countryside. An opportunity to continue the conversation that began at the gallery last year will occur on Tuesday, September 14 at 6 pm, when Ms. Greer will give an informal gallery talk and tour of the exhibition.  The kickoff event of the season for the Collector’s Club, this event is open to members of the club and their guests.  “I anticipate the same lively discussion we had when we first met,” Ms. Greer states.  In addition to her interactive presentation about the art, Ms. Greer will address questions about the art market.

Allen Tucker, "Apartment Building, New York City," ca. 1920, oil on canvas, 30 1/2 x 25 inches

The artists represented in the show include: Ralph Blakelock, Alfred Bricher, Theodore Butler, Alson Clark, Colin Campbell Cooper, Kenyon Cox, Bruce Crane, Charles Warren Eaton, William Glackens, Emile Gruppe, Philip Leslie Hale, David Johnson (see illustration above), Leon Kroll, Ernest Lawson, Hayley Lever, Peter Moran, John Francis Murphy, Edith Mitchill Prellwitz, Allen Tucker (see illustration at left), John Henry Twachtman, Theodore Wendel, and Alexander Wyant, among many others.

For more information, contact Gina Greer: ginagreer@spanierman.com, 212-832-0208

According to the New York Times, Amtrak notes of its ridership that it expects “Wednesday to be its heaviest single travel day of the year, with as many as 125,000 passengers nationwide.”

Although traveling can be stressful, it can also be a time to relax and partake in one of life’s simple pleasures: people watching. Many American artists have used the time they find themselves in transit to sketch—as seen in the sketches posted here.

We wish you a safe and happy holiday!

Sketches by Hayley Lever

Sketches by Hayley Lever

Albert Sterner, "People on a Train," Pen and Ink on Paper, 9 x 11 inches

]]> http://spaniermanartblog.com/2009/09/28/hayley-lever-as-a-watercolorist/ Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:08:00 +0000 Spanierman Gallery, LLC http://spaniermanartblog.com/2009/09/28/hayley-lever-as-a-watercolorist/

Hayley Lever (1876-1958)
Fishing Wharf, Marblehead, MA, ca. 1924
Watercolor on paper, 17 1/2 x 22 in. Monday, September 28th, marks the birthday of Hayley Lever (1876-1958), an Australian-American artist I had the pleasure of writing about, on behalf of Spanierman Gallery, in 2003. Born in Bowden Tannery, a suburb of Adelaide, he was christened Richard, but as a professional artist he preferred to use his second and last names only. I had conducted research on this talented painter on numerous occasions in the past, but the opportunity to do a book-length publication allowed me to examine all facets of Lever’s oeuvre––from the marines and urban scenes he produced in England and France during the early 1900s to the portrayals of New York City, New Jersey, upstate New York and coastal Massachusetts created after his move to the United States in 1912. His paintings are very personal, reflecting his belief that “art is the re-creation of mood in line, form and color,” but they were informed by styles such as impressionism and post-impressionism, including the bold aesthetic of Vincent van Gogh. In fact, it was Lever’s deft combination of realism, modernism and his own subjective vision that contributed to his popularity with collectors such as Duncan Phillips.

Hayley Lever (1876-1958)
St. Ives, Cornwall
Watercolor on paper
9 1/2 x 13 1/2 in. Lever was a skilled easel painter who could wield his brush with verve and gusto and he was equally comfortable with pen, ink and graphite. In studying his work, I was especially impressed by his facility with watercolor, a medium he used with regularity throughout his career. His one-man shows at museum venues such as the Corcoran Gallery of Art typically included watercolors, which tells me that he considered them just as important as his oils. Lever was drawn to watercolor’s transparent, light-reflecting quality and its portability––the latter being particularly relevant for an artist who typically spent his summers painting by the sea. Most importantly, though, Lever found watercolor an ideal means of creating a spontaneous work of art; in his words, watercolor was “inspirational, immediate, [and] impressionistic.” His penchant for simplified shapes and the way he would use color to create volume and mass attracted the attention of many contemporary commentators, among them Henry Tyrell, who linked him with a new generation of watercolorists that included progressive painters such as John Marin and Charles Demuth; as Tyrell put it in 1921, Lever was an “eager innovator . . . [whose] aquarelle no less than his oil paintings gains in stirring vitality with each successive season.”

Hayley Lever (1876-1958)
Still Life with Apples on a Chinese Plate, 1930
Watercolor on paper, 14 x 19-1/4The “vitality” that Tyrell referred to can be seen in the selection of Lever watercolors on display at Spanierman Gallery as part of the exhibition Five American Watercolorists, which runs through October 31st. In addition to depictions of the boats, wharves and coastlines that played such as prominent role in Lever’s art, he is also represented by a Vermont landscape, some early and very evocative views of St. Ives (see above right) and a very sumptuous still life (above left).

Carol Lowrey

For a comprehensive study of Hayley Lever’s life and art, see Carol Lowrey, Hayley Lever (1876-1958), preface by Marte Previti, (New York: Spanierman Gallery, 2003).