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Thomas A. Robertson'Composition # 4' — Mid-Century Modernismc. 1940
c. 1940
About the Item
Thomas Robertson, 'Composition #4,' color serigraph, edition 47, c. 1940. Signed, titled, and annotated 'Ed/47' in pencil. A superb, painterly impression, with fresh colors, on buff wove paper, the full sheet with margins (1 to 2 inches), in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed.
Image size: 10 9/16 x 8 1/2 inches (268 x 216 mm); sheet size 13 x 12 1/2 inches (330 x 318 mm).
An impression of this work is represented in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Thomas Arthur Robertson (1911-1976) was the son of an attorney. Although his father, a co-owner of the Arkansas Law School, insisted that his son study there, after graduating, Robertson enrolled at the Adrian Brewer School of Art in Little Rock, where his studies were supported by scholarships. He probably first learned about printmaking from the illustrator and woodcut artist Howard Simon.
In 1933, along with painter Howard Bragg and author Arthur Halliburton, Robertson helped found the Little Rock Art League and served as its first president. Modeled after the Art Students League in New York, this nonprofit organization offered art instruction and mounted annual exhibitions. Robertson won first prize in the spring exhibition of the Fine Arts Club of Arkansas in 1935, and his award-winning painting Summer Interlude hung in the annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Robertson moved to New Orleans in 1935 to study with Paul Ninas. There he established himself as a portraitist and became an active member of the New Orleans Art League. Robertson’s first one-person show was held at the Delgado Museum in 1937, an event sponsored by the Art Association of New Orleans.
In 1937, Robertson married and returned to Little Rock, but he long maintained his connections with New Orleans. In 1940, he became an instructor of art at Little Rock Junior College. His second solo exhibition at the Delgado Museum that year consisted solely of abstract paintings. In 1945, an exhibition of twenty of his nonobjective watercolors was mounted at the Addison Gallery in Andover, Massachusetts. Along with his serigraphs, these comprised a one-person exhibition at the Little Rock Public Library later that year.
Robertson’s screenprint abstractions are represented in the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Worcester Art Museum. His work, ‘The Orange Point’, is described in detail with a full-page illustration in David Acton’s seminal book on American printmaking, ‘A Spectrum of Innovation: Color in American Printmaking 1890-1960’, Worcester Art Museum, 1990.
- Creator:Thomas A. Robertson (1911 - 1976)
- Creation Year:c. 1940
- Dimensions:Height: 10.57 in (26.85 cm)Width: 8.5 in (21.59 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Myrtle Beach, SC
- Reference Number:
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