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Lovely, large original oil painting by Paul Blaine Henrie (1932-1999) featuring his iconic silly clown with a hand of 4 Aces. Titled: Poker Face
Great for the collector of vintage card games or the player of card games.
Provenance: fresh from a local Southern California estate.
Signed lower left and on verso
41 x 31 inches, framed
Condition: Looks excellent! Some repairs on verso. Ready to hang.
The following bio from Wikipedia: Paul Blaine Henrie (1932-1999) was an American painter and illustrator who was best known for seascapes and coastal scenes. Henrie was born Paul McKinley Henrie in Tampa, Florida. He established himself in 1960 in the artist community of Laguna Beach, California, where he lived in a hillside home with his wife and child. Henrie later moved to Carmel, California.
Henrie became known for his watercolors and palette-knife oil paintings of California coastal scenes as well as exotic locales he had visited in Tahiti, Mexico and New Orleans. In works prior to 1961, his signature is "Paul Henrie" or "Blaine". Afterwards, he signed them "Paul Blaine Henrie".
Henrie was criticized for "prostituting his undeniable talent" because he readily admitted to sometimes pumping out dozens of paintings only to maintain an expensive lifestyle. Henrie boasted he was the "fastest palette in the west" and could produce several paintings in a day. He said he only did it for sale in tourist trap-type art galleries "when I need a load of bricks." He said, "It may sound crass, but when I hear the bell and see the carrot, I'm gone."
Henrie reserved his best work for his collectors and several prestigious galleries like the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York. Notable celebrities who bought his work included Vincent Price, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, and Princess Margaret.
Henrie also illustrated two books for young adults, Legendary Outlaws of the West (1976) and Legendary Women of the West (1978), and wrote a how-to art book titled Painting in the South Seas.
After moving to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, Henrie made an unsuccessful run for a seat on the city council in 1988.
