Chuck Lantz Night Flight, Gull in Cloud, Original Watercolor, Hand Signed, 1981

The Painting

A single gull crosses a break in the weather. The sky is laid in deep ultramarine and indigo at the top and corners, and through the middle of the sheet banks of cumulus rise in soft lifted whites, their edges blotted out rather than drawn so the cloud stays vaporous. The paper does a great deal of the work: the cold press tooth catches the wash and leaves the surface flecked with tiny points of bare white, which from a step back reads as atmosphere.

The bird itself is the one piece of real drawing in the picture, and it is reserved rather than painted. The artist left that shape as untouched paper and worked the dark sky around it, which is the difficult way to do it in watercolor and the only way that gives a white this clean. The wings are fully extended, one tip raised, and the whole body is a single unbroken silhouette no thicker than a brush width at the tips.

It is signed Lantz at the lower right in a loose hand. The sheet is double matted, a cream inner mat inside a pale blue gray outer, and set under glass in a narrow weathered wood frame with a driftwood finish.

History & Provenance

The reverse carries a typed Certificate of Authenticity still fixed to the backing. It records the artist as Chuck Lantz, the title of the work as Night Flight, and the media as original watercolor, hand signed, with the registration number 81 81116 stamped in red. It was issued by Royal Art, Ltd., of 13012 Saticoy Street, Unit 5, North Hollywood, California, a firm that described itself on its own letterhead as Auction for Fund Raising. The original red bid sticker from that auction, numbered 12, is still attached below it.

Two independent things date the certificate. The registration number opens with 81. And the telephone number printed on it is a 213 number for a North Hollywood address, which matters because area code 818 was split off from 213 on January 7, 1984 and took the entire San Fernando Valley, North Hollywood included. A 213 number at that address therefore cannot postdate the beginning of 1984, and the registration prefix points to 1981.

Royal Art, Ltd. supplied framed, numbered original artwork to charity fundraising auctions across Southern California. A 1976 Camarillo Star account of a school parents' club benefit describes the format: more than a hundred works, oils and watercolors alongside prints, each framed, numbered and authenticated by Royal Art, which arranged and conducted the auction. The certificate is a record of what was sold at such an event rather than an independent scholarly attribution, and it is described here as exactly that.

The painter is most probably Chuck Lantz (1944 to 2019), who studied at Los Angeles Harbor College and Santa Monica City College, painted watercolor seascapes in the 1970s, made racing and aviation prints, and later worked from San Francisco as a motorsports photographer. Another Lantz watercolor on the market carries the same Royal Art certificate. The identification is probable rather than proven, and we present it that way.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Watercolor at this level of control is quieter than oil and easier to live beside. There is one subject, one gesture and two colors, and the picture resolves instantly from any distance, which makes it a good choice for a hallway, a stair landing, a bedroom or anywhere you pass rather than sit.

The blue is the selling point. It is a deep saturated indigo rather than a decorator blue, and it will hold its own against white walls, natural wood and pale linen without needing anything else on the wall to support it.

It also arrives documented, which is unusual at this price. You get the artist's name, the title he gave it, the medium, the year, and the auction it passed through, all recorded on the back in period paper that has never been disturbed. Most watercolors of this age arrive with none of that.