Here are images from the "NBI Art Reproductions" brochure, b&w, 1967 (thanks, Brant).

Paintings by Frank O'Connor:




Diminishing Returns, oil on canvas, original: 36 x 20, print: 23.5 x 13.125
Painting Within a Painting, oil on canvas, original: 36 x 14, print: 23.5 x 13
Serenity, oil on canvas, original: 36 x 24, print: 23.5 x 15.75
Leap Frog, oil on canvas, original: 30 x 24, print: 19.5 x 15.625
Still Life With Apples, oil on canvas, original: 12 x 16, print: 10.25 x 13.5
Character Study: Man With a Turban, oil on canvas, original: 24 x 20, print: 19 x 15.75


Paintings and drawings by Joan Mitchell Blumenthal:



Crystal and Fruit, acrylic, original: 26 x 20, print: 23.5 x 18
Still Motion, charcoal drawing, original: 25 x 19, print: 19.875 x 15.875
Island in the Sky, oil on canvas, original: 24 x 20, print: 23.5 x 19.75
Dancing Leaves, oil on panel, original: 20 x 24, print: 15.75 x 18.75
Awakening, white and black charcoal drawing, original: 18 x 24, print: 14.75 x 19.875
Sunset Silhouette, oil on canvas, original: 12 x 20, print: 11.625 x 19.75
Boy on the Bridge, oil on canvas, original: 25 x 30, print: 19.75 x 23.75
Repose, white and black charcoal drawing, original: 18 x 25, print: 15.5 x 19.75
Smokestacks and Towers, oil on canvas, original: 16 x 28, print: 13.5 x 23.5
Morning and the City, watercolor, original: 17 x 23, print: 18 x 23.5


One painting by Ilona R.S.:



Portrait of Ayn Rand, oil on paper, original: 17 x 14, print: 13.5 x 10.5

Thanks for posting. the NBI Art Reproductions. Does anyone know where these paintings are now. I suspect Barbara may have an idea.

Jonathan,

Thank you for scanning and posting these images. You beat me to it, as I just received the package from Brant.

Many, many thanks to Brant Gaede. What Ayn Rand's husband, Frank, was like more-or-less as a painter is now available to Objectivists in general. (I intend to scan most all of the NBI brochures Brant sent and make them available, too.)

Michael

You cannot judge the quality of Frank's or Joan's work by these images. You can say Frank tried a variety of subjects but I cannot discern a strong, particular style. I always disliked "Man Also Rises" for it's sheer crudity. I liked the idea behind it and the title. Joan is technically much, much more competent. I dislike her nudes. I saw her work on exhibition in 1970. Capuletti is interesting but overrated by Objectivists because of Ayn's praise. If he had kept painting (he died of a heart attack 30 years ago) he might have gotten even better and more interesting. He tended to overemphasize landscapes relative to the human subjects. He also tended to leave serious technical mistakes in his paintings. Phillip J. Smith pointed out to his acting students (me included) at the time that in one painting the woman's feet really aren't standing on the floor creating a poor, somewhat jarring effect. I once told Arthur Silber that I found Capuletti "cold," which I didn't like and Arthur said that that's what he did like. I have a signed color brochure for his 1970 New York exhibition at the Hammer galleries. The prices if I remember right were about $10,000 and up. I strongly suspect they aren't all that valuable today; that depends more on his reputation in Europe than the AR association I am pretty sure. Today's dollar is only 1/3 the value of the 1970 dollar if not even less.

--Brant

PS: Ellen, were any of Frank's paintings on display along with Joan's at the exhibition associated with Allan Blumenthal's piano concert in 1970? I think that Capu's were. If they weren't I'd understand why. I just don't remember.

Chris: "Does anyone know where these paintings are now. I suspect Barbara may have an idea."

I was told -- although I don't know first hand -- that Peikoff sold the paintings shortly after after Rand's death. I had owned the one entitled "Serenity," but I finally was forced, for financial reasons, to sell it.

Frank always intended to do a painting to be entitled "Icarus," which I wish he'd been able to do before he had to stop painting. In his concept of it, Icarus would not burn up, but would fly ecstatically, and unharmed, into the sun. If I wrote fantasy, that's how I would visualize Frank at the end, flying free into the sun with all the pain of all the years cast off.

Barbara

Is it perhaps the same painting that I discussed here?

Brant wrote,


Nor can you really judge the quality of anyone's work based on small scans or web images, especially when they're in black and white. I've seen large-scale color versions of two of Frank's paintings, and I thought they looked pretty good. It's been a long time, so I can't be sure, but I think that Serenity was one of them, and the other was of a male figure in a similar pose, which seemed to be a companion piece. And something just clicked: If I'm remembering correctly, both nudes (or similar paintings) appear briefly in James Valliant's Ideas in Action interview with Leonard Peikoff, as does Capuletti's Desnudo. I seem to recall that the camera work was irritating - too brief, too much motion, and odd, short-lens angles - but with Desnudo in particular, I remember getting a taste of what Ellen has described as the skin tone's living marble quality and dusky alabaster hue, at least more so that what can be seen in scans that can be found online.

Barbara wrote,


I remember that Peter Fonda's Frank was working on such a painting in a scene from The Passion of Ayn Rand where we, and Julie Delpy's Barbara, see that he's having difficulties. I thought it was a powerful moment in the film.

J

Some time after Miss Rand's review of Capuletti I visited Hammer Galleries. You could still look at some of Capuletti's work and I was impressed. I also saw Not Guilty and Unitias to Moore. Not Guilty is the cover work on Den Uyl's book on the Fountainhead. Unitias to Moore is on the Coridier web site. I thought he did great work. I was sorry to hear about his early death.

That's not the one, Dragonfly, but it looks like he had some trouble there as well. I'll see if I can get the title for you.

--Brant

I'm going to take my Capuletti brochure to Walgreens and scan the contents onto a CD and mail it to MSK so he can post it on OL. I'm Internet primitive. I can't even do links (nor have I tried to learn).

Busybody: "Brant. We have to learn how to do links."

Brant: "Don't bother me, don't bother me, don't bother me!"

--Brant

It's really quite simple. If you are editing on OL, switch to the page you want to link to, click with the right button and choose "copy link address" or "copy address", return to you edit and click on the little blue circle with the two black thingies (earth+binoculars?) above your edit window. It opens a new window with the highlighted text http://. Ignore that text and hit the <shift><insert> keys (or alternatively: <control>v). The address appears now in that field, click on OK. You're now asked for a text to describe the link, the standard suggestion My Webpage appears, you may ignore that too and just type your own text, like here or this link or whatever you want. In your text now the address appears like [ url=http:/<address>/]description[/url] (but without the space after the first "[" ). This looks messy, but if you use the preview function, you'll see only the description appear underlined. To show a picture in the text you do practically the same, but using the green tree symbol instead of the blue circle. To link to a specific post on OL is a bit more complicated, but I think this is enough for the first lesson.

Regarding your inquiry
I have 1 original painting of Frank O'Connor which I purchased from Leonard Piekoff in around 1983 in an art studio of an Objectivist on the north side of a park in the lower east side of Manhattan.
I have 4 1968 prints, Serenity, Painting within a Painting, Leap frog, Still Life with Apples.
I had 3 other original painting by Frank O'Connor, which I have sold over the years. They were: an early study for Serenity, Portrait of Man in Turbin and one which contained a clown with balloons.
The original painting I still have is the actual painting which is in the "Painting within a Painting". It is called "The Mandarin"
In the late 1980s I tried to buy more Frank O'Connor painting, but Dr. Piekoff would not sell, nor would anyone else who had Frank' paintings.
I am now interested in selling the remaining items
If anyone is interested in buying any of these items, please contact me at bobrsp@sbcglobal.net

> Some time after Miss Rand's review of Capuletti I visited Hammer Galleries. You could still look at some of Capuletti's work and I was impressed. [Chris]

I love his work. Its purity, serenity, and innocence. The painting that sticks in my mind was of a parklike scene in a city with some skyscrapers? in the distance. A man and a woman stand side by side peacefully gazing off into the distance. They are relatively small in the overall composition, the focus is more on their almost idyllic surroundings. Everything is clean, sunny, sharply and clearly drawn. And I remember feeling, in the words of the old song, what a wonderful world.

(I hope I have reconstructed that painting correctly, it's been a very long time.)

Phil; I have seen the painting you post about and your describtion is very good.

While looking through my recently purchased Ayn Rand Letter I saw a notice that the Sures Art Enterprises Ltd. was selling reproduction of art works. I know the company is out of business but does anyone have old brochures from them?

One of the works that is mentioned is a painting called "The Kingdom of Earth". Another is called "The Conductor". Both are by Joan Mitchell.

Any help would be appreciated.