Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 8

David Fredenthal
"Brick Layers" WPA American Scene Mid 20th Century Modern Drawing Men Working

c. 1938

About the Item

"Brick Layers" WPA American Scene Mid 20th Century Modern Drawing Men Working. 21 x 15 inches Watercolor on paper. c. 1938. Signed lower left. BIO David Fredenthal (1914 - 1958) was one ot America's most respected watercolor artists. He was famous for his bold, intensely vigorous and complex paintings and drawings that expressed his deep feeling for excitement with life and living. He was a draftsman with seemingly a special gift for catching anything, physically and emotionally on the spot, and he never went anywhere without three or four loaded pens and a sketchbook in his pocket. As part of the WPA project he executed a number of murals including the Sports Pavilion on the Heinz Building of the New York World's Fair 1939. Some of his fresco and mural techniques were inspired by his friendship with Diego Rivera who had admired and encouraged him in the early 1930's. After he won a traveling scholarship to Europe from The Museum of Modern Art at age 19, he was the recipient of two Guggenheim grants in Painting. He had his first solo exhibition at the Downtown Gallery in New York in 1937 at age 23, and many others after that including the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1947. Because of Fredenthal's prodigious drawing gifts, he was chosen by Erskine Caldwell to illustrate his novel "Tobacco Road" in 1940. He was a War Artist Correspondent for both the State Department (the European and Asian fronts) and Life magazine from 1943 to 1946 and his work was featured in Life magazine regularly during the war and after until the end of his life. Also featured in Life in 1956 were drawings that Fredenthal had vividly recorded on his sketch pad, of the entire filming of the movie, The Pride and the Passion, starring Cary Grant, Sophia Loren, and Frank Sinatra, along the treacherous mountain passes of Spain. Though he was fiercely committed to an art that expressed deeply human social values and issues and was quite hostile to abstraction, he was friendly with a number of abstract artists such as David Smith, Ad Reinhardt, Philip Guston, Paul Feeley, and Herman Cherry.
More From This SellerView All
  • Man Working Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Industrial WPA Modern
    By Jo Cain
    Located in New York, NY
    Man Working Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Industrial WPA Modern Jo Cain (1904 - 2003) Telephone Pole Worker 38 1/4 x 18 1/2 inches Oil on pap...
    Category

    1930s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Gouache

  • Answering the Door Early 20th Century w/c Fauvism Social Realism American Scene
    By Stuart Davis
    Located in New York, NY
    Answering the Door Early 20th Century w/c Fauvism Social Realism American Scene Note: We have three similar in style works from 1911 available now on 1stDibs. All are framed identi...
    Category

    1910s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

  • Two Men on a Street Early 20th Century w/c Fauvism Social Realism American Scene
    By Stuart Davis
    Located in New York, NY
    Two Men on a Street Early 20th Century w/c Fauvism Social Realism American Scene Note: We have three similar in style works from 1911 available now on 1stDibs. All are framed identi...
    Category

    Early 1900s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

  • "Backyards" Early 20th Century Watercolor Fauvism Social Realism American Scene
    By Stuart Davis
    Located in New York, NY
    "Backyards" Early 20th Century Watercolor Fauvism Social Realism American Scene Note: We have three similar in style works from 1911 available now on 1stDibs. All are framed identic...
    Category

    1910s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

  • "Going to the Festival" WPA Ashcan 20th Century American Scene Modern Realism
    By Daniel Ralph Celentano
    Located in New York, NY
    "Going to the Festival" WPA Ashcan 20th Century American Scene Modern Realism Daniel Celentano (1902 - 1980) "Going to the Festival," 14 1/2 x 10 1/2. Watercolor on paper, c. 1930s....
    Category

    1930s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor, Paper

  • TOBACCO ROAD Mid 20th Century Realism 1940 Drawing from the Novel WPA Literary 3
    By David Fredenthal
    Located in New York, NY
    TOBACCO ROAD Mid 20th Century Realism 1940 Drawing from the Novel WPA Literary 3 10 1/2 x 6 (sight), Signed David Fredenthal lower right. Framed by Lowy. Offered here is one of several original drawings by WPA artist David Fredenthal that were first published in the 1940 illustrated edition of the novel TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell. Background on the Drawing Erskine Caldwell remarked, on seeing the work of David Fredenthal, 26-year-old painter: "That boy could draw my Tobacco Road people." A casual comment, it was enormously productive. The young painter was just finishing a two-year Guggenhcim Fellowship, preceded by a year's study in Paris, two one-man shows at New York's Downtown Gallery, and a fellowship at the Cranbrook Academy near Detroit. He was out in Colorado Springs when he heard what Caldwell had said about him. Fredenthal hadn't read Tobacco Road. He had not even seen the play - now breaking all records in its seventh year on Broadway. But he swapped a portrait for a second-hand Ford and headed East. In New York he learned that Dnell, Sloan & Pearce were bringing out a deluxe edition of Tobacco Road. But he had no entrée to the publishers, and Caldwell, to his disappointment, was out of town. So he drove on to Georgia to have a look at the Tobacco Road people. He found Dr. I. C. Caldwell, the author's father, in Wrens, Ga., going on his ministerial rounds among people like the Lesters. Fredenthal got a room from a couple who ran a 1-pump filling station...
    Category

    1930s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Ink, Watercolor

You May Also Like
  • Schooners along the Hudson, West Point Academy in the distance.
    Located in Middletown, NY
    A serene Hudson River scene by a student of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Anna May Walling was born in 1881, a native of Goshen, New York. She was a graduate of the Blair Academy, and Prat...
    Category

    Early 20th Century American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor, Handmade Paper

  • La Loire
    Located in Middletown, NY
    Pen and black ink on watermarked Ingres laid paper, 9 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches (234 x 310 mm), signed, dated and titled in brown ink, and initialed and titled in black ink in the lower right corner. Light to moderate age tone and mat tone, and with the signature and notations in brown ink having become quite attenuated, although legible. Presented in a basic black wood frame with a label from the Country Art...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Ink, Handmade Paper, Pen

  • "Sleigh Ride, Winter, " Fletcher Martin, Woodstock, Holiday Scene Illustration
    By Fletcher Martin
    Located in New York, NY
    Fletcher Martin (1904 - 1979) Sleigh Ride, Woodstock, New York circa 1955 Watercolor on paper 14 x 11 inches Signed lower right Provenance: James Cox Galler...
    Category

    1950s American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

  • King Street, Troy (Modern Realist Cityscape in Black & White Watercolor)
    By Scott Nelson Foster
    Located in Hudson, NY
    watercolor on paper 9 x 11 inches 17 x 21 x 1 inches, brown wood artist made frame, white mat This photo-realist cityscape of Albany, NY was painted with black and white watercolo...
    Category

    2010s American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Archival Paper, Watercolor

  • Mid-Century Hillside Trees Landscape Watercolor (unfinished)
    By Joseph Yeager
    Located in Soquel, CA
    Beautiful mid-century landscape watercolor with a tall, stately tree in the foreground, its many forking branches depicted with exceptional detail, and a verdant background of rollin...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

  • Mid Century Mazatlan Beach Catamaran Figurative Landscape Watercolor
    By William A. Corbett
    Located in Soquel, CA
    Vibrant figurative seascape of a beach in Mazatlan, Mexico with several figures and a catamaran reflecting beautifully in the shallow water by William A. Corbett (American. 1914-1960). Titled "Beach- Mazatlan" on verso. Signed "William Corbett" in lower left corner. Presented in a simple wood frame, with a double mat of off-white silk and royal blue with plexiglass. Image size: 22”H x 14.75”L William A. Corbett began drawing at an early age. He constructed signs and displays for theaters and nightclubs around Pittsburg. He studied art with Vincent Nesbert at the Pittsburg Art Institute and with Robert Gwathmoy, Roy Hilton, and Robert Laper at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He also studied painting and sculpture at the Louisville Art Center. Corbett was in the Army Engineers at Fort Knox, Kentucky where he studied, practiced, and had exhibits with army artists there from 1941-1943. He was very much interested in materials and technique, content and style in painting. His favorite Artists were El Greco, Leonardo, Rembrandt, Renoir, Burchfield, and Andrew Wyeth, Jr. He studied two years at Boston museum School with Karl Zerbe, Daivid Aronson and others. He later designed and did art work for General Outdoor Advertising Co. In 1943, he married Ruth Osborne of Louisville and they had one son, Michael. In 1951 he moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida with his family. Exhibitions: Army Art Show--- 1st Prize in Landscape, 1942 Kentucky & southern Indiana Exhibition-- Honorable mentions for Fisherman's Curse 1949, Don Q...
    Category

    1960s American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

Recently Viewed

View All