Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 9

Fletcher Martin
"Sleigh Ride, Winter, " Fletcher Martin, Woodstock, Holiday Scene Illustration

circa 1955

About the Item

Fletcher Martin (1904 - 1979) Sleigh Ride, Woodstock, New York circa 1955 Watercolor on paper 14 x 11 inches Signed lower right Provenance: James Cox Gallery at Woodstock, Willow, New York When Fletcher Martin died in 1979, the New York Times entitled his obituary “Artist of Action.” No three words better encapsulated Martin’s place in twentieth-century U.S. art. Not since George Bellows had any U.S. artist been so enraptured by rough and rugged masculinity. Martin carved out a name for himself by painting and illustrating men in combat, rodeos, racetracks, boxing matches, and saloons. Fletcher Martin was born in 1904 in Palisade, Colorado, one of seven children of newspaperman Clinton Martin and his wife Josephine. He acquired a knowledge of the western United States as the family relocated to Idaho and Washington. Martin dropped out of high school at age 15 and was largely self-taught as an artist. He took on a series of odd jobs--migratory farmworker, light heavyweight boxer, lumberjack, and printer—that would later provide the subjects for some of his most evocative work. After serving in the Navy (1922-26), Martin settled in Los Angeles. Working for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration enabled Martin to quit his job as a printer in 1935 and try a career in painting. He won several commissions to paint murals in the naturalistic American Scene style including one in Los Angeles and one in Kellogg, Idaho. Much of his work from this time reflected labor issues, often taking a pro-worker stance. Martin was active in the L.A. chapter of the anti-fascist American Artists Congress, serving as president in 1939. In 1938, the Museum of Modern Art bought his “Trouble in Frisco,” a porthole view of a striking longshoreman and a strikebreaker. During World War II, Martin worked as an artist-correspondent for Life Magazine and made hundreds of sketches of U.S. soldier life. The 27 December 1943 issue of Life magazine featured 14 of his painting from the North African campaign, including the cover illustration. The feature helped to bring him national recognition. He subsequently made illustrations of wartime London and the 1944 Allied invasion of France. In the 1950s, with the American Scene in eclipse, Martin dabbled in landscapes, abstractionism, and even ‘naïve’ images of women and children. Despite this slight turn to more decorative work, he still loved to paint manly sports, the more violent and dangerous, the better. Boxers remained a favorite subject, but cowboys and bullfighters also put in an appearance. Many of Martin’s most popular works were reproduced as woodcuts, lithographs, or silkscreens and appeared in countless taverns, restaurants, and basements across the United States. Martin’s restlessness was legendary. After World War II, he settled in New York City in 1945 and then in Woodstock, NY. However, he traveled widely as a teacher and illustrator, usually remaining no more than a year or two at schools around the United States. Martin married five times as well as a famous relationship with movie star Sylvia Sidney; four of his marriages ended in divorce. At his death from a heart attack at 75 years of age, he was dividing his time between Mexico and a home in Sarasota, Florida. Fletcher Martin remains well known for his images of soldiers in World War II and his depiction of boxing matches. Yet despite the violence inherent in his favorite subjects, he was able to depict the soldier, the worker, the sportsman or the everyday man with both strength and empathy.
More From This SellerView All
  • Out of the Sun (Under the Racetrack Grandstand), Saratoga Springs, Anne Diggory
    By Anne Diggory
    Located in New York, NY
    Anne Diggory (b. 1951) Out of the Sun (Under the Racetrack Grandstand), 1978 Watercolor on paper 7 x 10 inches Signed and dated lower left Provenance: Ac...
    Category

    1970s Contemporary Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor, Pencil

  • Five at the Rail, View of Racetrack and Crowd, Saratoga Springs, New York
    By Anne Diggory
    Located in New York, NY
    Anne Diggory (b. 1951) Five at the Rail, Saratoga Springs Racecourse, New York, circa 1978 Watercolor on paper 4 3/4 x 6 inches Initialed lower right: Dig...
    Category

    1970s Contemporary Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor, Paper

  • "Medieval Thoughts, Prague, " Alphonse Mucha, Czech Art Nouveau Illustration
    By Alphonse Mucha
    Located in New York, NY
    Alphonse Mucha (Czech, 1860 - 1939) Medieval Thoughts, circa 1890 Wash, ink, and watercolor on paper 11 x 9 inches Signed lower right Provenance: Phillips New York, 19th and 20th ce...
    Category

    1890s Art Nouveau Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor, Ink, Paper

  • "Afternoon Sun, " Ann Wyeth McCoy, Interior and Landscape
    Located in New York, NY
    Ann Wyeth McCoy (1915 - 2005) Afternoon Sun Watercolor on paper Sheet 24 x 18 inches Signed lower left Provenance: Somerville Manning Gallery Private ...
    Category

    20th Century American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor, Paper

  • "The Red Silo" Winold Reiss, Rural Regionalist Landscape, Sunny Day on Farm
    By Winold Reiss
    Located in New York, NY
    Winold Reiss The Red Silo Signed lower left Watercolor on paper 20 x 29 inches Winold Reiss (1886-1953) was an artist and designer who emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1913. Probably best known as a portraitist, Reiss was a pioneer of modernism and well known for his brilliant work in graphic and interior design. A compassionate man who greatly respected all people as human beings, he believed that his art could help break down racial prejudices. Like his father Fritz Reiss (1857-1915), who was also an artist and who was his son's first teacher, Winold Reiss was artistically moved by diverse cultures. The elder Reiss focused on folk life in Germany while Winold drew substantial inspiration from a range of cultures, particularly Native American, Mexican, and African-American. As did many young aspiring artists, Winold Reiss studied with the esteemed painter and teacher Franz von Stuck at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, which was at that time a center of the decorative and fine-arts movement. It is not known whether Reiss met E. Martin Hennings...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

  • "Lobstermen in Gloucester, Mass." Lionel Reiss WPA Social Realism Fishermen
    By Lionel S. Reiss
    Located in New York, NY
    Lionel S. Reiss (1894 - 1988) Lobstermen in Gloucester, Massachusetts, circa 1943 Watercolor on paper Sight 17 1/2 x 23 inches Signed lower left Provenance: Private Collection, Las Vegas, Nevada In describing his own style, Lionel Reiss wrote, “By nature, inclination, and training, I have long since recognized the fact that...I belong to the category of those who can only gladly affirm the reality of the world I live in.” Reiss’s subject matter was wide-ranging, including gritty New York scenes, landscapes of bucolic Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and seascapes around Gloucester, Massachusetts. However, it was as a painter of Jewish life—both in Israel and in Europe before World War II—that Reiss excelled. I.B. Singer, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, noted that Reiss was “essentially an artist of the nineteenth century, and because of this he had the power and the courage to tell visually the story of a people.” Although Reiss was born in Jaroslaw, Poland, his family immigrated to the United States in 1898 when he was four years old. Reiss's family settled on New York City’s Lower East Side and he lived in the city for most of his life. Reiss attended the Art Students League and then worked as a commercial artist for newspapers and publishers. As art director for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he supposedly created the studio’s famous lion logo. After World War I, Reiss became fascinated with Jewish life in the ‘Old World.’ In 1921 he left his advertising work and spent the next ten years traveling in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Like noted Jewish photographers Alter Kacyzne and Roman Vishniac, Reiss depicted Jewish life in Poland prior to World War II. He later wrote, “My trip encompassed three main objectives: to make ethnic studies of Jewish types wherever I traveled; to paint and draw Jewish life, as I saw it and felt it, in all aspects; and to round out my work in Israel.” In Europe, Reiss recorded quotidian scenes in a variety of media and different settings such as Paris, Amsterdam, the Venice ghetto, the Jewish cemetery in Prague, and an array of shops, synagogues, streets, and marketplaces in the Jewish quarters of Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lublin, Vilna, Ternopil, and Kovno. He paid great attention to details of dress, hair, and facial features, and his work became noted for its descriptive quality. A selection of Reiss’s portraits appeared in 1938 in his book My Models Were Jews. In this book, published on the eve of the Holocaust, Reiss argued that there was “no such thing as a ‘Jewish race’.” Instead, he claimed that the Jewish people were a cultural group with a great deal of diversity within and between Jewish communities around the world. Franz Boas...
    Category

    1940s American Realist Landscape Paintings

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

You May Also Like
  • Large Watercolour of Pleasure Boats Moored on the River in Florida by USA Artist
    Located in Preston, GB
    Large Watercolour of Pleasure Boats Moored on the River in Florida by USA Artist David Coolidge AWS (American 20th-21st Century) Art measures 40 x 30 i...
    Category

    Late 20th Century American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor

  • 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

  • Medicine Man
    By Cassilly Adams
    Located in Missouri, MO
    Cassilly Adams (American 1843-1921) "Medicine Man" c. 1860s Watercolor on Paper Unsigned Provenance: Questroyal Gallery, NYC Site Size: approx. 14.5 x 8....
    Category

    Mid-19th Century American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor, Paper

  • 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

  • "Tobacco Road" Mid 20th Century Realism 1940 Drawing from the Novel WPA Literary
    By David Fredenthal
    Located in New York, NY
    "Tobacco Road" Mid 20th Century Realism 1940 Drawing from the Novel WPA Literary 19 1/4 x 11 1/2 (sight), Signed David Fredenthal lower right. Framed by ...
    Category

    1930s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Ink, Watercolor

  • 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

Recently Viewed

View All