- Details
- Written by: Ken Furtado
I'd like to challenge the belief that the chalkware sculpture shown here was created by George Quaintance.
This much is indisputable: In 1936, Quaintance created three sets of male-female faces that were cast in hydro-stone and marketed and sold by The House of Shaw in New York City. They are The Kiss, Wind Blown, and Sea Breeze. He added a fourth set of separate faces in 1939, calling them We Modern. Collectively, he called them masques. There's a full-page publicity flyer in which they are pictured and described in detail. You can see that flyer here.
- Details
- Written by: Ken Furtado
This is an over-simplification, but when George died in 1957, he bequeathed his estate, both business and personal, to his longtime friends and business partners, Tom Syphers and Victor Garcia. The will is a matter of record. Tom died in 1964, and either he did not leave a will (I have been unable to find one) or he left a will that was not probated, but privately executed. Thus, his half of the estate goes into legal limbo.
- Details
- Written by: Ken Furtado
Christopher Clark is a tough guy to pin down, and the commonness of both his given name and his surname turn Internet searches into gargantuan tasks with few rewards.
Clark was a contemporary of Quaintance and, like Quaintance, his early career was spent in part painting portraits of prominent social figures. A Florida native, Clark was born in 1903. I was not able to find a date of death.
- Details
- Written by: Ken Furtado
I get asked this question frequently. Conventional wisdom apparently dictates that an original work by Quaintance is "priceless."
To give two examples, consider the infamous "Rita Hayworth." Despite the fact that this full-sized portrait is of a former Los Angeles socialite named Mrs. Milton Stevens (details here), and that I provided incontrovertible proof of this to the owner, it was offered on eBay in 2005 for nearly $2 million.
- Details
- Written by: Ken Furtado
An item that appeared recently on eBay elicited a flurry of questions that, in turn, elicited this posting. The item was a bronze Narcissus sculpture.
This was a solid bronze figurine, not one of the hydrostone sculptures sold by the Quaintance Studio that someone had dunked in bronze like a pair of baby shoes or spray-painted with metallic paint, such as this image at the left. And Narcissus has four bronze brothers! Here's their story.
- Details
- Written by: Ken Furtado
About once a year I have a conversation with George Quaintance's closest living relative. (I won't disclose her name or whereabouts, for fear of unleashing hordes of well-wishing strangers upon her.) We talk about health and family and, of course, George, and we share any new information we may have encountered since our previous conversation.