Carl Dobsky (b. 1972) brings a muted sense of poetry to humble everyday objects and urban scenes. His fall show at John Pence Gallery in San Francisco, where the artist recently moved from New York City, demonstrates both technical skill and individuality.

“The Eternal Masquerade,” an exhibition of paintings and prints by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst (1890–1978), appeared at the Georgia Museum of Art earlier this fall. Born in Birmingham, England, and educated at the Birmingham School of Art and the Royal Academy, Brockhurst moved to the United States in 1939. He was one of the most successful portrait painters of the first half of the twentieth century, with a client list that included Mellons, Rothschilds, Vanderbilts, J. Paul Getty and the Duchess of Windsor.

The gallery scene, once mostly dormant during the summer months, now extends across a longer schedule. During June and July, Jenkins Johnson Gallery presented its Eighth Annual Realism Invitational. For the first time the event was held on both coasts, with twenty of the thirty-eight artists showing work in both San Francisco and New York City. This invitational was dedicated to the memory of Robert Brawley (1937–2006), with seven works, seen only in San Francisco. A visual philosopher as well as a fine craftsman, he juxtaposed versions of Ingres nudes and Flemish Christs with alchemically charged still-life elements. The originality of his paintings demonstrated how traditional iconography can be re-imagined. His boldness will be missed. As in the past, the organizers of this year’s exhibition tried to show the diversity of contemporary realism, but in a fairly compact community, the roster of names seemed largely familiar. Skip Steinworth’s exquisite graphite drawings are always a pleasure; Four Apples (2006) has uncanny soft reflections and almost palpable textures. But the catalogue cover went to a bolder image, one of Will Wilson’s sumptuous riffs on the old masters. The subject of Valencia (2006) is posed like a refined Renaissance beauty, but in her simple black, unadorned by jewels, the dark young woman has a vivid, earthier presence all her own. A gold-lined green curtain is pulled back to reveal a blue-tinged lunar landscape in the Flemish style.

The exhibition of paintings by Stephen Tanis (b. 1945), at Sherry French Gallery in New York City, is entitled “Close at Hand,” reflecting the sometimes startling immediacy of these recent still lifes and figure studies. That immediacy comes across as psychological in figure groups such as Srebrenica (2003)—a reaction to the Bosnian tragedy of the mid-1990s—and the more low-key Scuffle (2001).

“New Faces,” a group show of four young representational painters, was a late summer offering at Forum Gallery in New York City. The show had a distinctly international flavor, and the artists were very different stylistically. All seemed engaged in the social, political and psychological undercurrents of today’s society, in contrast to contemporary realists working deliberately in the old master tradition.