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ESTE Gallery

Edwin Blashfield was born in Brooklyn in 1848 to William H. Blashfield and Eliza Dodd.

He studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts after initially studying engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He moved to Europe in 1867 to study with Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat in Paris and remained abroad until 1881, traveling, painting, and exhibiting his work at Salon exhibitions.

Following his early success as a genre painter, Blashfield became a widely known muralist, whose works adorned the dome of the Manufacturing and Liberal Arts Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, several state capitals, and the central dome of the Library of Congress.

Blashfield was a member of numerous arts organizations, including the National Academy of Design, the National Society of Muralists, of which he served as president from 1909 to 1914, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Blashfield was awarded the National Academy of Design's Gold Medal in 1934, became an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects, and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from New York University in 1926. He served on the Commission of Fine Arts from 1912 to 1916.

He married Evangeline Wilbur in 1881, and together they wrote Italian Cities (1900) and translated Vasari's Lives of the Artists (4 vols., 1897).

Blashfield died in 1936 at his summer home on Cape Cod and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.


"Springt Scattering Stars" by Edwin Blashfield. 1927. Oil on canvas. 130 cm × 110 cm. (Private collection)

Gordon Mortensen was born on April 27, 1938, in North Dakota. He works in a unique woodcut technique.
The process of creating a single painting takes up to three months.
Gordon Mortensen uses a single block of wood, usually basswood, in his work. The image is first applied to the wood, then cut away in layers, and each press is made onto handmade Japanese mulberry paper. Each painting uses up to 64 colors and 45 presses.

The print is successful because of the relationships between colors, but the forms and their relationships are also vital. Gordon Mortensen deftly manipulates these elements using pattern, and depth and contrast, combined with soft, opalescent hues, beautifully capture the essence and mood of the landscape.
The inventive textural effects, overall balance, and painterly qualities of the wood confirm the artist's artistic vision and technical mastery, and demonstrate why Gordon Mortensen has become a legend in his field. The appeal of his lush landscapes has earned him many prestigious awards and good reviews worldwide.

Artist Gordon Mortensen. Woodcuts.

Born in 1949 in Exeter, New Hampshire, he attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, graduating in 1971 with a BFA in graphic arts. Since 1971, he has lived and worked in Northampton, Massachusetts.

To date, Scott has had numerous cultural and group exhibitions around the world. Prior's paintings are in numerous public and historical collections, including the Boston Museum of Art, the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and the New Britain Museum of Art in Connecticut.

Scott Prior is considered a recognized master of painting, depicting familiar subjects as they've never been seen before, whether it's the human figure, landscape, or still life. This is due to light, which has an incredible ability to transform the various subjects in Prior's work. The most important "character" of his painting.

Scott Prior is a talented American realist artist.

Largely self-taught, he taught drawing at Viennese schools from 1797. In 1815, he was elected to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, where he taught from 1816 (his students included Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller).

Schödlberger's style was significantly influenced by his copying of paintings by Claude Lorrain and Jacob van Ruisdael, as well as his Italian journey of 1817-18, which finally shaped him as a landscape painter, inclined to depict highly idealized landscapes.

These landscapes enjoyed great success, including with his royal patrons, Francis II and Ludwig of Bavaria


"Rocky Coast in Moonlight," 1830. Artist Johann Nepomuk Schödlberger (Austria).

After working as a photographer for nearly a decade, Morten Laskogen began experimenting with 3D graphics in 2018. He discovered that many principles of lighting and composition familiar from photography applied here as well; however, there was a crucial difference: in a 3D environment, there were no lighting limitations—he could literally control the sun!

Morten continues to practice photography, but in recent years, working with 3D has enabled him to create mesmerizing pieces that would have been impossible to achieve through photography alone.


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"Springt Scattering Stars" by Edwin Blashfield. 1927. Oil on canvas. 130 cm × 110 cm. (Private collection)

Artist Gordon Mortensen. Woodcuts.

Scott Prior is a talented American realist artist.

"Rocky Coast in Moonlight," 1830. Artist Johann Nepomuk Schödlberger (Austria).

Work by Danish digital artist Morten Laskogen (b. 1986).