Attic Sale: More from the Collection of Gordon Peers (1909-1988)
Gordon Peers was a significant Rhode Island artist who taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, heading up the Painting Department. Check out the Biography section on the website to find out more details on Peers. He collected a number of works by RISD colleagues, other artists and his students. The paintings below are various works from his personal collection that are for sale in our Attic Sale.
John Davis Coughlin (1932 – 1993)
$300
Alchemy of Memory
Medium Etching on Paper, 23 ¼” x 17 ½”
1966 Old Wooden Frame and Matted: 31” x 26 ½”
Signed in lower right hand corner, 4/50 copies
Title in lower left followed by “For Gordon and Florence”
Biography for Jack Davis Coughlin
Jack Davis Coughlin - artist, professor, and music aficionado - was born in Greenwich, CT on February 19, 1932. Coughlin, who was Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is mostly known for his skill as a printmaker, but he is equally adept in media such as pencil, watercolor, oil, and, low relief bronze sculpture in the ancient lost wax casting technique used by the old masters. His printmaking media is as diverse as his subject matter: etching, engraving, aquatint, woodcut, and lithography - as well as non graphic media - are used to create birds, animals, landscapes, marine, and portraits of the famous and not-so-famous.
Coughlin’s academic and illustrative style ranges from realism to surrealism and grotesque. He works in series producing portraits of literary and musical figures such as Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats, Little Walter, Big Walter Horton, Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), and James Cotton. His love of the harmonica and blues music gave rise to a series of twenty-six pencil and watercolor portraits published as “A Brush with the Blues” that, according to Joe Burns of the Provincetown Banner, paid honor to his musical mentors. In addition to his private work, Coughlin receives many commission requests and his art has been used to illustrate books of poetry.
Coughlin studied at the Art Students League in New York City. Later, he earned both a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1954 and a Master of Arts in 1961 at the Rhode Island School of Design. For the next thirty years, in addition to creating art, he distinguished himself as a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
His memberships include the National Academy of Design in NYC, the Society of American Graphic Artists in NYC, the Boston Printmakers in MA, and the Silvermine Guild of Artists in New Canaan, CT.
Coughlin has had solo exhibits throughout the United States - including the Ainsworth Gallery in Boston, MA and the Silvermine Guild; the David Hendriks Gallery in Dublin, Ireland; and the galleria Villa Schifanio in Florence, Italy. Since his first exhibit in 1959, Coughlin has won awards such as the E. K. Sloane Purchase Award, 21st American Drawing Biennial, Norfolk Museum in 1965; first prize for printmaking, 60th Annual Exhibit, Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, Wadsworth Athenaeum in CT, 1970; H. P. Shope Purchase Award, Society of American Graphic Artists, 51st Print Exhibit, 1971.
He also exhibited at the American Drawing Biennials in 1962, 1964, and 1966; the Contemporary Artists Eligible for Awards at the National Institute of Arts and letters, NYC, in 1970; the 17th Biennial American Printmaking at the Brooklyn Museum, NY, in 1971; the 150th Annual Exhibition at the National Academy of Design, in 1975; the 3rd Norwegian International Print Biennial in 1976; the 4th International Exhibition of Graphic Art, Frechen, Germany; and the Associated American Artists, NYC, in the 1970s.
Recent exhibits and displays include the Kenny Gallery in Galaway, Ireland; the Fine Arts Gallery 34 at Finger Lakes Community College in Canandaigue, NY; and the R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, MA.
Some of the museums and institutions represented by Jack Coughlin’s work include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC; the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in NYC; the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences in VA; the National Collection of Fine Art in Washington, DC; the Worcester Museum of Art in MA; the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, GA; the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman, OK; the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, FL; the Frederick and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, FL; the Wright Museum of Art in Beloit, WI; the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, MN; the Philadelphia Free Public Library in PA; the University of Colorado; the Staedelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfort, Germany; and the University of Ulster in Coleraine, Northern Ireland.
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Ed Douglas
$350.
Green View from Window, 1984
Medium Oil/Masonite
11 ½” x 12”,
Framed: 19” x 19”, purchased by Gordon Peers June 10, 1984
Ed Douglas
$150
Studio Model, 1965
Medium Conte and Ink Wash on Paper, 10” x 12 ½”
Framed and Matted: 19 1/2” x 16”, and signed in the lower right corner
Biography for Ed Douglas
Ed Douglas, a retired painting instructor at the Maine College of Art. Douglas began his lengthy career at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he studied under Richard Diebenkorn. Sophisticated color, texture and composition are hallmarks of his work. This painting is from the estate of former RISD professor, Gordon Peers, an admirer of Ed Douglas’s painting.
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Ed Fink
$50.
Portrait of Three Women
Medium
7 ¾” x 12”
Matted: 14 /2” x 19 ½”, and signed in the lower right corner
