Gordon K. Bachelor Sold at Auction Prices

- d. 1988

Gordon K. Bachelor was a US Navy veteran who later studied at Miami Art School with Emile Roure. He had a studio gallery in Coconut Grove and was active in Miami and the Florida Keys.

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    • Gordon Keith Bachelor, Florida (1911 - 1989), Egrets, 1911, oil on canvas, 17" x 23", 27" x 33" (frame)
      Dec. 17, 2022

      Gordon Keith Bachelor, Florida (1911 - 1989), Egrets, 1911, oil on canvas, 17" x 23", 27" x 33" (frame)

      Est: $300 - $400

      Gordon Keith Bachelor Florida, (1911 - 1989) Egrets, 1911 oil on canvas signed and dated lower right. From the collection of Edward P. Bentley, Art Researcher and Historian, Greenville, Michigan. Biography from the Archives of askART: Gordon Keith Bachelor (1911-1989) Gordon Keith Bachelor was born in the northwest Florida town of Hampton, in 1911. Family albums record him painting pictures as a child after his father (who was in the turpentine business) bought him a set of watercolors from the nearest five-and-ten cent store. His Obituary in the Miami Herald of July, 1989, records family stories that he painted signs on windows throughout the small hamlet of Hampton when he was in the fourth grade. At the age of sixteen, he left home by hitching onto freight trains as he traveled from town to town doing sign and house painting. His wife, Rebecca Horton Bachelor, a painter herself, reminisced about her husband's brief barnstorming career in an old World War I airplane until he cracked it up by hitting a signboard during a stunt. In 1942, Bachelor joined the Navy where he saw combat in both the South Pacific and in Korea. He also headed a painting detail responsible for the lettering on battleships in his fleet. At this time Bachelor started to paint warships in his spare time selling them to his crewmates. After the war, Bachelor attended art schools in New York including the Art Students League where he perfected his natural talent in capturing the world in well-drawn paintings of brilliant color. Bachelor didn't study art books and often bragged that he "never opened one that he could stand to read." Instead, he relied on what he called his "experience and intuition." After a move to South Miami in the 1950's, he took additional classes at area art leagues and purchased a small building in Coconut Grove for $ 500.00 where he opened "Bachelor of Arts," a small picture framing store and art shop where he exhibited his own paintings, those of his wife, Rebecca and paintings by a number of important and early Florida artists including Franz Josef Bolinger and A. E. "Beanie" Backus, who became a friend and mentor to Bachelor. In 1963, Miami Herald columnist Larry Thompson captured the "Cracker individualist Bachelor" in an article about this colorful personality who was increasingly becoming popular as "a painter of Florida landscapes, Poinciana trees and whatever caught his fancy." Bachelor was known to close his frame shop by leaving a sign that read, "Positively no picture framing at this time – gone fishing" when he wanted to concentrate on his landscape painting. At one time during this period Bachelor stopped painting and decided to build and sell sailboats. He soon returned to painting. The Bachelors closed their shop and gallery in 1975 and moved to North Carolina where he and Rebecca settled into their retirement. They returned to Miami six months prior to his death at 78 years in 1989. Gordon Keith Bachelor's oil on canvas Fly Fishing, Ormond Beach, 1968, one of his most accomplished Florida topographical paintings and his only known Volusia County work, was completed during one of his brief visits with friends at the Daytona Beach Art League, founded in 1932 by Don J. Emery, where Bachelor met Reginald Marsh, whose artist- father had built a mansion called "The Battleship" in nearby Ormond Beach. Bachelor was also a frequent house guest of former army friend and fellow painter the late Henry Saltzman and his wife Ruth who operated a popular and successful frame and art emporium in downtown Daytona Beach. The location selected by Bachelor for Fly Fishing, Ormond Beach, 1968 is the picturesque Ormond Beach Loop, a scenic drive that looks southwest into the pristine and quintessential Florida marsh wilderness of the Tomoka River State Park. This painting was formerly in the collection of hotelier, John Willard Marriott, Sr. who owned a large winter home in Golden Beach, Florida. Purchased directly from Bachelor by Marriott, the oil on canvas was sold during the liquidation of the Marriott Estate in 1985. It is currently in a private Florida collection. Source: Written and submitted by Gary R. Libby, author and curator

      Ripley Auctions
    • GORDON BACHELOR, Oil on Canvas
      Mar. 14, 2020

      GORDON BACHELOR, Oil on Canvas

      Est: $200 - $400

      Oil on canvas painting by Gordon K. Bachelor (American, d. 1988) of two boats in a Florida wetland scene. Signed at lower left corner and dated to 1984. Bachelor was a US Navy veteran who later studied at Miami Art School with Emile Roure. He had a studio gallery in Coconut Grove and was active in Miami and the Florida Keys. Excellent condition. Framed size is 12 1/2" x 15 3/4".

      Blackwell Auctions LLC
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