This work on paper by Photorealist painter Richard Estes displays the development of the style and subject matter that would come to define his distinguished career. The loose, gestural brushwork capture the movement of the water and shiny surface of the glass, foretelling his decades-long exploration of light and reflections.

Photorealist painter Richard Estes (born 1932) focuses on urban subjects and geometric landscapes. Known for his ability to paint glass, chrome and the reflections within and around them, Estes is one of the founders of the international photo-realist movement of the 1960s. Like Audrey Flack, Chuck Close, Denis Peterson, Duane Hanson, Ralph Goings and other sixties-seventies realist artists, Estes painted from photographic stills rather than from life, in order to capture the elusive and photographic quality of light and to create paintings that appeared as photographs. His subjects include storefronts, buildings, city dwellers, icy glaciers, Antarctic landscapes and New England landscapes. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Endowment Fellowship Award for Painting (1971), the California Arts Council, Achievement in Visual Arts Award (1995), and the MECA Award for Achievement as a Visual Artist, Maine College of Art (1995). His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Hirshhorn Museum of Sculpture, Washington DC; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan. He lives and works in New York and Maine.

Selected Public Collections:
Académie Francaise, Paris, France
Art Institute of Chicago Chicago, Illinois
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
Museum of Modern Art. New York, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York