Collection: Bradley Schmehl

Bradley Schmehl is a historical artist from central Pennsylvania (where he has resided all his life) who possesses a painterly, realistic style that serves many different genres and subjects extremely well - from portraiture and figures to landscape and architecture, and from placid pastorals to military combat action.

As a youth, Brad was compelled to draw and paint the things that he loved in the world around him, and determined early to become adept at the craft of a naturalist painter. A graduate of the Pennsylvania School of the Arts (now Pennsylvania College of Art and Design), he has trained with painters whose works represent a wide-ranging diversity of methods and techniques.

Bradley’s work has always tended towards the historical, given his interest in such things as weaponry and machines, historic architecture, figures, animals and nature. His style is instantly recognizable, marked by fastidiousness in draftsmanship, remarkable detail, a painterly approach which is at the same time free and precise, and bold, naturalistic tones and colors.

In creating his historical paintings, Bradley endeavors to draw the viewer into his pictures by means of dramatic composition. Never an artist to portray figures as ‘types’, his multi-figure canvases depict a range of unique individuals, whose facial features and expressions vary greatly in accordance with the broad palette of human emotions. His portrayal of the light, and the tonal contrasts of his subjects impresses upon the viewer the solidity of forms and, simultaneously, the gravity of the moment.

Bradley Schmehl's work is featured in private and public collections across America, including the Booth Western Art Museum, the Delaware State Museum, the Command General Staff College and the U.S. Army War College, the Silver Companies, Boca Raton, Florida, as well as the Philadelphia Convention Center collection.