Donald Borthwick (American, 20th Century) Painting. Title - Nude in Blue Room. Modern watercolor painting in vibrant rich electric blue. Signed lower right D. Borthwick 1971. Painting measures 33 inches high, 22.5 inches wide. Frame measures 37 inches high, 25 inches wide. In good condition. From the Water Mill estate on Long Island, NY of Academy Award winning film director Anthony Harvey (1930-2017). Borthwick was an American artist known for his inventive and fresh paintings that incorporate figurative and realistic elements, literary references, and abstract compositions. He was born in San Diego and studied at the University of California at Berkeley and San Diego State College, before obtaining his M.A. in 1960. Borthwick also studied abroad at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts at Oxford University, which may have influenced his work. Many of Borthwick's paintings are composed of rooms, circles, and spaces with small figures and symbols, as well as paintings within paintings and scenes that relate to each other visually. He often breaks up his canvases to create a sense of spatial relationships, and uses vivid colors to draw attention to particular areas or dramatic movements in the painting. Some of his work also incorporates polychrome relief, using cardboard, plaster, and paint to create bold patterns and shapes. Borthwick's art is characterized by its ability to evoke a range of emotions, including whimsy, humor, pathos, and pain. His ability to incorporate literary references and drawn forms into his paintings provides additional insight into his artistic vision and mystique, and encourages viewers to engage with his work on a deeper level. Despite his success as an artist, Borthwick remains relatively unknown outside of artistic circles, and his life and career remain largely undocumented. However, his innovative approach to painting and ability to evoke complex emotions and ideas through his work make him an important figure in the history of American art. Obituary from NY Times - Dec. 13, 2017: Anthony Harvey, Lion in Winter - Director and Kubrick Editor, Dies at 87. It might have gone down as the most ridiculous scene in the most audacious film that Anthony Harvey ever worked on, but at least as Mr. Harvey told the story, a momentous event in the real world kept it from the moviegoing public. It was an epic two minutes worth of pie throwing, and it was originally to be the ending of - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, - Stanley Kubrick's dark satire of the nuclear age. Mr. Harvey, the editor on that movie, was pretty pleased with the way the chaotic scene had come out. It was a brilliant piece of work, he once said. Who knows? I certainly thought it was. But the movie, which was scheduled for release in January 1964, was to receive its press premiere in late November 1963, right when all sorts of plans were thrown into turmoil by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That ending, how it started, the George Scott character threw a custard pie to the Russian ambassador, and it missed and hit the president, Mr. Harvey told the film journalist Glenn Kenny in 2009. Columbia Pictures, he said, was very nervous about anything to show the president, any president in that state. As a result, the pie-throwing scene was scrapped. Others involved with the movie have over the years given different explanations for the changed ending, but in any case the airborne pies were replaced with the now familiar montage of nuclear explosions - set to Vera Lynn's rendition of the song We'll Meet Again, an unsettling ending instead of a slapstick one. Mr. Harvey would go on to become a director himself, teaming with Katharine Hepburn on several films, most notably The Lion in Winter (1968), for which he was nominated for an Oscar. He died on Nov. 23 at his home in Water Mill, on Long Island, at age 87. The Brockett Funeral Home confirmed the death. Mr. Harvey was born on June 3, 1930, in London. His father, Geoffrey Harrison, died when he was young, and after his mother, the former Dorothy Leon, remarried, he took the surname of his stepfather, Morris Harvey, an actor. He got an early taste of the movie business when he was cast in a small part in the 1945 film "Caesar and Cleopatra," which starred Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh, but his real entree came when he landed a job as an editor for the British filmmakers John and Roy Boulting. He learned the art of editing as it was done in predigital days, pasting countless film clips together by hand. He received his first film-editor credits in 1956, on a short called - On Such a Night and the feature Private's Progress, a war comedy. He was the editor on Kubrick's - Lolita in 1962, which led to the - Dr. Strangelove assignment, a difficult one that involved cutting between three concurrent story lines, one set in the war room of the American government. We had a huge kind of war room of our own in the cutting room, Mr. Harvey told Mr. Kenny, and we put up pieces of paper representing every sequence in different order. It was Kubrick, he said in a 1994 interview with The New York Times, who told Mr. Harvey that he was ready to direct. It was Kubrick, too, who gave him an important piece of advice: If an actor is giving a dazzling performance, hold on to that shot and resist the temptation to cut away to, for instance, the reactions of other characters in the scene. In 1966, Mr. Harvey directed - Dutchman, a short film based on a play by LeRoi Jones, who would become better known as Amiri Baraka. Peter O'Toole was impressed enough by that film that he recruited Mr. Harvey for - The Lion in Winter, in which Mr. O'Toole starred as Henry II opposite Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine. Working with her is like going to Paris at the age of 17 and finding everything is the way you thought it would be, Mr. Harvey said. Hepburn won an Oscar for her performance, splitting the award with Barbra Streisand, who won for Funny Girl. Mr. Harvey also directed Hepburn in a well-regarded television adaptation of Tennessee William's - The Glass Menagerie in 1973. John J. O'Connor, reviewing that film in The Times, called it a special TV event, demanding attention. It won four Emmy Awards. But Mr. Harvey's output as a director was limited. His handful of theatrical releases included the comedy - They Might Be Giants in 1971, the drama Richard's Things in 1981 and another Hepburn vehicle, Grace Quigley, in 1985. That movie was poorly received, and Mr. Harvey retreated from film directing, returning only in 1994 for This Can't Be Love, a television movie starring Hepburn and Anthony Quinn. He retired to his Long Island home, which he had acquired three years earlier. He leaves no immediate survivors. Mr. Harvey was comfortable working in Hollywood but preferred life on the East Coast, where the film business was not quite so all-consuming. He told of once having surgery in a Los Angeles hospital. As I was coming to, he recalled, the anesthesiologist said, - I'm very anxious to get into movies.
(lot of 8) Donald Borthwick (American, 20th century), "Reclining Figure (Brown)," 1968, "Two Soft Figure Studies," 1968, "Notebook (Girls)," 1967, "Study for Eastern Dress 2," 1966, "Summer Bathers," 1966, "Notebook: Girls," 1967, "Notebook Girls," unsigned, and "Pursisting Image," 1967, mixed media collages, 7 works signed and dated, all with gallery labels (Gallery de Silva, Santa Barbara, CA) affixed verso, largest overall (with mat): 32.5"h x 42.5"w
(lot of 6) Donald Borthwick (American, 20th century), "Highway Talisman," 1962, "Studio Assembly," 1963, "A Moment of Dreamy Indolence," 1964, In the Pink Room, 1964, "Statistic," and "The Death of General Montgomery," 1964, mixed media collages, 5 works signed and dated, four with gallery labels (Gallery de Silva, Santa Barbara, CA) affixed verso, largest overall (with mat): 21.75"h x 32"w
(lot of 7) Donald Borthwick (American, 20th century), Reclining Nude, Reliquary, Collage, and Figural Study, mixed medias, gallery labels (Gallery de Silva, Santa Barbara, CA), affixed verso on some, together with three mixed media drawings with graphite on paper depicting Figural Studies, overall (largest/with mat): 24"h x 30"w
(lot of 4) Donald Borthwick (American, 20th century), "Mini Skirt, Figure on Brown Couch, Pool with Seascape and Reclinig Nude, mixed medias, gallery labels (Gallery de Silva, Santa Barbara, CA), affixed verso on each, overall (largest/with mat): 40"h x 32"w
(lot of 7) Donald Borthwick (American, 20th century), Reclining Nude, Reliquary, Collage, and Figural Study, mixed medias, gallery labels (Gallery de Silva, Santa Barbara, CA), affixed verso on some, together with three mixed media drawings with graphite on paper depicting Figural Studies, overall (largest/with mat): 24"h x 30"w
(lot of 4) Donald Borthwick (American, 20th century), "Mini Skirt, Figure on Brown Couch, Pool with Seascape and Reclinig Nude, mixed medias, gallery labels (Gallery de Silva, Santa Barbara, CA), affixed verso on each, overall (largest/with mat): 40"h x 32"w
(lot of 2) Donald Borthwick (American, 20th century), The Runner, 1966, and Study of a Female Torso, 1966, mixed medias on paper, each signed and dated, overall (sheet/largest): 23"h x 29"w
Donald Borthwick (American, 20th century), Abstract Seascape, 1968, mixed media on paper, signed and dated upper left, overall (with frame): 32"h x 40"w
(lot of 2) Donald Borthwick (American, 20th century), "Bathers," 1968, mixed media collages, each signed and dated lower right, gallery label (Gallery de Silva, Santa Barbara, CA), affixed verso, sights: 27.5"h x 20"w/18"h x 16.5"w, overall (each/with mat): 40"h x 32"w
