Self-Portrait with Heads of Two Cats and Two Dogs Executed in August, 1979 (http://www.davisandlangdale.com/Pages/AlbertYorkAdditional.html) Albert York... was a highly acclaimed yet reclusive painter of small still lifes, landscapes and figures – largely made from invention and memory. The New York Times had an obituary by Roberta Smith that gives a good overview. He was 80 and lived on Long Island where he lived most of life in virtual isolation from the art world, despite having a large following of devotees amongst other painters and collectors. His total output of work over his life was small there are only about 200 to 250 works, usually oil on panel that rarely are larger than 12 inches. (http://paintingperceptions.com/albert-york-r-i-p/) Albert York’s small, visionary paintings of humble subjects — including cows, vases of flowers, and pastoral landscapes of Long Island’s East End, as well as the occasional figurative subject — were often done from memory. Painted on small scraps of wood in the basement of his home during the early morning hours, these works display a distinctive palette and a rare mastery of the medium. York integrated artistic influences as diverse as Piero della Francesca, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Giorgio Morandi, and Édouard Manet while always holding the conviction that painting could distill the essence of things. In a 1995 New Yorker profile, Calvin Tomkins called York “the most highly admired unknown artist in America,” and two decades later his work remains unfamiliar to many people. ...York was born in Detroit in 1928. He moved to New York in 1952 and studied briefly at the Art Students League. In the early 1960s he moved to Long Island’s East End, where for much of his life he supported himself as a house painter. He completed only a few paintings a year and eschewed publicity, preferring to work outside the art world’s mainstream. (http://www.matthewmarks.com/new-york/exhibitions/2014-11-08_albert-york/) Born in Detroit in 1928, Mr. York was abandoned by his mother as an infant and raised by his father. He studied at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto and the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts. After serving in the United States Army in 1951 and ’52, he moved to New York City, where he took evening lessons from the Social Realist painter Raphael Soyer. ...Although he continued to draw to the end of his life, he completed his last painting in 1992. It’s in the exhibition, a lushly abstracted bouquet rendered by a flurry of green, orange, red and blue brush strokes. In the New Yorker article, Mr. York spoke of his disappointment on seeing his paintings in a 1989 exhibition of three Long Island landscape painters at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton. “It’s pretty lousy — pardon the word — work,” he said. “Pretty bad. It has no relation to good painting.” Beyond that, why Mr. York produced no more paintings between 1992 and his death in 2009 remains a mystery. But then so does much else about this singular artist and his tantalizingly enigmatic oeuvre. (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/arts/design/albert-york-paintings-at-matthew-marks.html)