Robert Taylor is the most widely collected aviation artist. His works capture the prowess of fighter pilots and aviation.
Taylor’s artwork depicts aviation scenes. His paintings convey the technical details of the machines, while still portraying an overall aesthetically pleasing and even romanticized image. The airplanes are depicted with realistic detail, including even scuffed paint, scratches, and dirt. Many prints of Taylor’s works have been produced, including prints with signatures of the pilots who flew the planes that he depicted in his paintings.
Taylor spent much of his life in Bath, England working as a fine art restorer. He was regarded as one of the most talented restorers in the West of England and often worked on many works by Old Masters. Taylor was 32 when he became a full time painter for The Military Gallery. The impact of his early restoration career can easily be seen in his popular, dramatic, and inspiring aviation works, which have been produced with great attention to detail.
One example of Taylor’s incredible work is displayed in this limited edition color lithograph, which was published in 1989 by Robert Taylor. It is numbered 560 of just 1,250. “Zemke’s Wolfpack” has been signed by Bud Mahurin, Robert Johnson, Frances Gabreski, and the first commander, Hub Zemke. The dynamic scene depicts the famous Wolfpack fighting off German FW190s and defending a damaged B-17.
Originally known as the 56th Fighter Group, “Zemke’s Wolfpack” quickly became a popular nickname for its pilots. These pilots were greatly feared by their enemies in WWII and produced more “aces” than any other USAAF group in history. The Wolfpack was sent to England when the U.S. entered WWII and underwent numerous missions across France and Germany, accompanying Allied bombers on missions. The only group to use P-47s throughout the war, the pilots employed a dive, fire, and return technique to make up for the plane’s lack of maneuverability. Zemke and his men effectively dive-bombed airfields, troops, supply lines, and overall destroyed more enemy aircraft in combat than any other fighter group in the Eighth Air Force. The prowess of this group is represented in Taylor’s work, and the signatures from the actual pilots below makes this work an extraordinarily collectable piece.
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Mitchell became one of the most prominent American map publishers of the mid-19th century and his visual record of the early Unites States gives us an incredible lens into the rapid growth of our country during this time. This engraved and hand-colored 1858 map of the United States is a wonderful example of Westward expansion and the worldwide powerhouse that America was becoming.
Douglas Adams (1853-1920) was a London based landscape painter. He exhibited in the Royal Academy between 1880 and 1894, showed at the Society of British Artists, the Grosvenor Gallery, and the New Gallery and shared a Primrose Hill studio with other artists. Adams specialized as a landscape and wildfowl painter and often painted sporting scenes. Many of his paintings celebrated the field sports of hunting, shooting, and fishing, set against stunning Highland landscapes and painted in the Victorian tradition.