No Place Like Jersey

As amazing as it sounds, Henry Gasser had a lifelong love affair with New Jersey. Born in Newark in 1909, he lived, studied and worked in the Garden State right up to his death in Orange in 1981. A master of watercolors and oils, he painted everyday subjects - street life, back yards, old houses, as well as harbor and fishing village scenes.

On Tuesday, March 24, John Moran Auctioneers will sell Gasser’s A Street Corner in Patterson, New Jersey, as Lot 51 in their California & American Art Auction. A painting typical of the artist’s work, it captures perfectly one of Gasser’s recurring themes – an atmosphere he liked to call "solitary silence." The work is done in casein on paper laid to paperboard under glass.

Gasser earned his artistic chops at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art, a school he returned to from 1946-54 to serve as Director. Painter, lecturer, teacher, illustrator and author, he possessed a humble yet candid view of his life’s artistic work. “I have accumulated,’ he once said, “a collection of paintings that will serve as a historic record of the community.”

John Moran Auctioneers’ California & American Art Auction contains 270 works by some of the country’s most esteemed artists including Maurice Braun, E. Charlton Fortune, William Wendt, Grigory Gluckmann, John Frost, Anna Keener, Guy Rose, Paul Lauritz and Will Sparks (pictured above). It’s a great chance to “buy American” as you continue to add to your collection.