Wash Day at St. Tropez by E. Charlton Fortune Leads California Art Auction by Bonhams

Wash Day at St. Tropez is a bright and colorful oil on canvas by E. Charlton Fortune (1885 – 1969). This painting, signed as Charlton Fortune, was exhibited in the Grand Palais, Salon de la Société des Artistes Français (Paris) around 1927. Acquired from a private collection in the United Kingdom, it is a leading lot in the upcoming California Art auction, presented by Bonhams. E. Charlton Fortune was a leading plein-air painter from California. Although she is known as a Californian artist, she spent a great deal of time living and working throughout Europe in the late 1920s. The present work likely dates from the two years she spent in the South of France when Saint-Tropez was a humble fishing village. 

Painted in 1936, East 5th (Street) by Phil Paradise is an oil on canvas that contrasts with the sunny, colorful image of the 1920s by E. Charlton Fortune. East 5th (Street) is a time capsule of life in New York after the Great Depression. People are lounging in a rundown hotel lobby as a man is getting a shave and a haircut in the local barber shop next door. Philip Herschel Paradise (1905 – 1997) showed extraordinary talents in his early years after training at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. He traveled to the East Coast in the 1930s, painting in various locales and selling paintings through galleries in New York. These rare early examples of his paintings give viewers a snapshot of everyday urban and rural life from a bygone era. Visit Bonhams auction house for more information on the upcoming California Art auction and to place a bid.