'Showery Day, Venice' by Donald Teague, Mid-Century Oil, National Academy, Metropolitan Museum, American Watercolor Society, Art Students League

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Signed, lower right, 'Donald Teague, N.A'. (American, 1897-1991); additionally signed, verso, and titled, 'Showery Day - Venice' and painted circa … Read more Signed, lower right, 'Donald Teague, N.A'. (American, 1897-1991); additionally signed, verso, and titled, 'Showery Day - Venice' and painted circa 1965.
Provenance: Private Estate, Rancho Mirage, California.

A substantial oil painting of Venice after the rain, showing numerous fashionably-dressed pedestrians walking alongside the Bacino San Marco beneath a dramatic architectural detail of the gothic tracery of the Ducal Palace. A naval frigate and a passenger liner are anchored in the calm waters of the lagoon while, on the right, stand a group of gondoliers, awaiting their next passengers.

Born in Brooklyn, Donald Teague studied at the Pratt Institute and, subsequently, under George Bridgman and Frank Vincent DuMond at the Art Students League in New York. After serving in the Navy during WWI, Teague remained in London to study with Norman Wilkinson. On his return to New York, he continued his studies at the Art Students League with Dean Cornwell who, in 1921, helped Teague receive his first commissions as an illustrator for national magazines. Because Teague became engaged as the primary illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post, he signed his Collier's illustrations with the brush-name of Edwin Dawes.

In the 1920's, Teague spent several summers on a Colorado ranch where he began to paint equestrian studies and developed his understanding of equine anatomy. Moving to California in 1938, he began to specialize as an illustrator of Western scenes. When Collier's ceased publication in 1958, Teague ended his career as an illustrator. He moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea, becoming an Artist Member of the Carmel Art Association and devoting the next thirty years to his vocation as a fine artist.

Over the course of a long and successful career, Teague was the recipient of numerous prestigious prizes, medals and juried awards including five First Prizes from the National Academy of Western Art, both the Gold and Silver Medal Honors from the American Watercolor Society, the S.F.B. Morse Gold Medal from the National Academy of Western Art, and two Gold Medals from the Cowboy Artists of America. In 1948, he was elected to the National Academy of Design.

Donald Teague also won international recognition for his landscape and figural work, exhibiting in major museums throughout the world, including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, London's Royal Watercolour Society, the Tokyo Museum, the Peking National Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Watercolor in Mexico City, The Chicago Art Institute, the Sydney Museum in Australia and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, among others.

We are pleased to offer this large and luminous view of La Serenissima that shows masterful handling of the reflections of cloudy skies in the rain-wet paving stones. The painting is accompanied by a hardback, first-edition copy of 'Donald Teague: A Life in Color' by Claudia Meyer, Introduction by Tom Lovell, Nygard Publishing, 1988.

Reference:
Artists in California 1786-1940, Third Edition, Edan Milton Hughes: Crocker Art Museum, Sheridan Books 2002, Vol. 2, page 1095; Who Was Who in American Art 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America, Peter Hastings Falk, Sound View Press 1999, Vol. 3, page 3263; E. Benezit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs, Jacques Busse, 1999 Nouvelle Édition, Gründ 1911, Vol. 13, page 512; Vollmer Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler des 20. Jarhhunderts, Hans Vollmer, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 1992, Vol. 4, page 424; Mallett’s Index of Artists, Daniel Trowbridge Mallett, Peter Smith: New York 1948 Edition, R.R. Bowker Company 1935, page 432; Samuels’ Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West, Peggy and Harold Samuels, Book Sales, Inc. 1985 Edition, page 481; Biographical Encyclopedia of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers of the U.S.: Colonial to 2002, Bob Creps, Dealer’s Choice Books, Inc. 2002, Vol. 2, page 1356; Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, Glen B. Opitz, Apollo Press 1983, page 925; et al. See less