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William Wolk (January, 1951 - May, 2022) was an American realist painter working in West Virginia. From 1984 through 2008, he hosted his namesake one-man gallery at The Greenbrier, a 6,500 acre resort. His primary working studio was maintained in West Virginia till 2008. William Wolk Fine Art is now located in Sarasota, Florida. [1]
William Wolk was born on January 12, 1951, in Miami Beach, Florida. As a child, he began drawing from a very early age, executing free hand portraits in charcoal at age eight and insisting on painting in oils at age nine. By age sixteen, Wolk made his professional debut by selling nine paintings in the fourth annual Coconut Grove arts Festival in Coconut Grove, Florida. Wolk studied in Europe and at the Academy of Fine Arts; Florence, Italy and at The Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. Despite the training he received in drawing, he is essentially a self-taught painter. His classical inclinations sprung from his affinity for the work of artists as varied as Andrew Wyeth, Bouguereau, Rembrandt and a host of High Renaissance painters. While living in Florence, he copied from the masters at the Uffizi Gallery, and the many churches and public works throughout the city and in Rome. At age nineteen, after returning from Europe, Wolk had his first one-man-show at the Vassili Gallery in Coral Gables, Florida. Over the following twenty years, Wolk lived and exhibited in a number of U.S. cities; Atlanta, GA; Miami, FL; Santa Cruz, CA and New York, NY. It was in New York City in the early eighties that Wolk focused on The Dance as his subject. He received the distinction, Artist-in Residence at The Harkness House on East 75th Street, which hosted a one-man-exhibition of over forty of his dance works. Another one-man-show was held at the Lincoln Center Gallery in the Metropolitan Opera House. It was also at this time that three of Wolk's dance works were published and distributed worldwide by Bruce McGaw graphics. [2]
Cautious about being “type-cast” as a dance painter, Wolk moved to rural West Virginia in 1983, adding watercolor to his repertoire. Expanding his subjects to include landscape, animals, still life and portraits, Wolk founded his one-man gallery, The William Wolk Gallery of Fine Art at The Greenbrier in 1984. In May 2008, Wolk ended his twenty-five-year-long relationship with The Greenbrier and relocated his collection of paintings to his mountaintop home. Within three months, a massive fire destroyed the home completely including all of the contents, which included a majority of the Wolk collection. Work that survived was either in the artist's studio, located across the driveway from the residence, or in galleries and museums around the country. [3] William Wolk and his wife, Marie, lived in southeastern West Virginia until 2010 at which time they moved to Sarasota, Florida.
William Wolk was a Realist painter. His subject matter focuses on the figure, portraiture, still life, animals and landscape. His subject selection continually grows. As an example, paintings of the American flag appeared in his repertoire of still-life paintings in 2006 and are portrayed as a serious interior study of a visually complicated subject. On November 6, 2007, Wolk was honored in the Oval Office for his post 9/11 portrait of president G.W. Bush. The portrait was inducted into the presidential collection. On January 12, 2009, Wolk's portrait of the legendary golfer, Sam Snead was acquired for the permanent collection of the USGA Museum [4] in Far Hills, New Jersey. A portrait of the artist at work, entitled Standing Behind Myself, is in the permanent collection of the Guilford College Art Gallery [5] in Greensboro, North Carolina.
In 2008, William & Marie Wolk founded a 501 (c) (3) foundation entitled Friends of Kharnang [6] to support the projects of Yangtul Kharnang Rinpoche, a Tibetan Lama. The Wolk's met the Rinpoche in West Virginia and felt moved to help him accomplish the many projects, including the building of a hospital, a home for the aged, running water, classrooms for monks and students, etc. that he is undertaking for the benefit of the monastery and the nomadic population of the region. William Wolk created The Tibet Painting as a fundraiser. The painting features a portrait of the Dalai Lama and took a year and a half to complete.
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Eliza Cecilia Beaux was an American artist and the first woman to teach art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Known for her elegant and sensitive portraits of friends, relatives, and Gilded Age patrons, Beaux painted many famous subjects including First Lady Edith Roosevelt, Admiral Sir David Beatty and Georges Clemenceau.
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni was an Italian painter who displayed a solid technical knowledge in his portrait work and in his numerous allegorical and mythological pictures. The high number of foreign visitors travelling throughout Italy and reaching Rome during their "Grand Tour" led the artist to specialize in portraits.
Joseph Wright, styled Joseph Wright of Derby, was an English landscape and portrait painter. He has been acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution".
Giovanni Battista Moroni was an Italian painter of the Mannerism. He also is called Giambattista Moroni. Best known for his elegantly realistic portraits of the local nobility and clergy, he is considered one of the great portrait painters of the Cinquecento.
George Benjamin Luks was an American artist, identified with the aggressively realistic Ashcan School of American painting.
John French Sloan was an American painter and etcher. He is considered to be one of the founders of the Ashcan school of American art. He was also a member of the group known as The Eight. He is best known for his urban genre scenes and ability to capture the essence of neighborhood life in New York City, often observed through his Chelsea studio window. Sloan has been called the premier artist of the Ashcan School, and also a realist painter who embraced the principles of Socialism, though he himself disassociated his art from his politics.
Thomas Sully was an American portrait painter in the United States. Born in Great Britain, he lived most of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He painted in the style of Thomas Lawrence. His subjects included national political leaders such as United States presidents: Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson, Revolutionary War hero General Marquis de Lafayette, and many leading musicians and composers. In addition to portraits of wealthy patrons, he painted landscapes and historical pieces such as the 1819 The Passage of the Delaware. His work was adapted for use on United States coinage.
Ian Hornak was an American draughtsman, painter and printmaker. He was one of the founding artists of the Hyperrealist and Photorealist fine art movements; credited with having been the first Photorealist artist to incorporate the effect of multiple exposure photography into his landscape paintings; and the first contemporary artist to entirely expand the imagery of his primary paintings onto the frames.
William James Glackens was an American realist painter and one of the founders of the Ashcan School, which rejected the formal boundaries of artistic beauty laid down by the conservative National Academy of Design. He is also known for his work in helping Albert C. Barnes to acquire the European paintings that form the nucleus of the famed Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. His dark-hued, vibrantly painted street scenes and depictions of daily life in pre-WW I New York and Paris first established his reputation as a major artist. His later work was brighter in tone and showed the strong influence of Renoir. During much of his career as a painter, Glackens also worked as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines in Philadelphia and New York City.
Philip Martin Pearlstein was an American painter best known for Modernist Realist nudes. Cited by critics as the preeminent figure painter of the 1960s to 2000s, he led a revival in realist art.
John Koch, was an American painter and teacher, and an important figure in 20th century Realism. He is best known for his light-filled paintings of urban interiors, often featuring classical allusions, many set in his own Manhattan apartment.
Theresa Ferber Bernstein-Meyerowitz was an American artist and writer born in Kraków, in what is now Poland, and raised in Philadelphia. She received her art training in Philadelphia and New York City. Over the course of nearly a century, she produced hundreds of paintings and other artwork, plus several books and journals.
Lowell Blair Nesbitt was an American painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor. He served as the official artist for the NASA Apollo 9, and Apollo 13 space missions; in 1976 the United States Navy commissioned him to paint a mural in the administration building on Treasure Island spanning 26 feet x 251 feet, then the largest mural in the United States; and in 1980 the United States Postal Service honored Lowell Nesbitt by issuing four postage stamps depicting his paintings.
John Wollaston was an English painter of portraits who was active in the British colonies in North America for much of his career. He was one of a handful of painters to introduce the English Rococo style to the American colonies.
Humberto Calzada is a Cuban-American artist living in Miami, Florida, since 1960.
Walter Henry "Jack" Beal Jr. was an American realist painter.
Andrei Kushnir is an American fine art painter. He is known for his landscapes, city views, and seascapes, but also has created genre, portraits and still life works. He is a resident of Maryland, with a studio in Washington, D.C.
Naomi Louise Sunderland Hosterman (1903–1990), also known as Naomi S. Hosterman, was an American painter and illustrator from Charleston, West Virginia.
William Woodward is an American painter and muralist from Washington, D.C. He is known for his mural commissions throughout the United States and a number of his pieces are in the permanent collections of major museums.
Robert Bauer is an American painter who creates pictures of people, landscapes, backyards, and gardens. Bauer's paintings of backyards and gardens gained him much recognition and his art has been shown in multiple exhibitions.
