Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 5

Aaron Berkman
"Under the Beach Umbrella, " American Realist, Watercolor, Seaside, Figural

About the Item

Aaron Berkman was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1900. In 1916 Berkman attended the Connecticut League of Art Students, founded by Charles Noel Flagg. Beginning in 1919 he studied under Albertus E. Jones at the Hartford Art School. Berkman was influenced during this time by George Inness and John Singer Sargent and the Old Masters. He received a scholarship to the Museum Art School of Boston in 1921 and then traveled to Europe, remaining there from 1924 through 1925. He spent time in France, Italy, Spain, Holland and Belgium. In 1929 Berkman moved to New York City, continuing a friendship and painting relationship with Milton Avery. He was appointed by the W.P.A. as Director of the WPA Art Center at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Berkman helped established the A.C.A. Gallery in New York City at 52 West 8th St., the first Artist Cooperative Gallery in New York City. He spent summers on Monhegan Island in Maine, Cape Ann in Massachusetts, the Connecticut Shore, Vermont and the Adirondacks. When the WPA ended, the 92nd Street Y became the Y Art Center, with Berkman remaining as the Director. He also taught art classes and lectured on art history. Berkman had many one-man exhibitions and group shows. He wrote two books. Art and Space and The Functional Line and was a columnist for ARTnews. When Berkman retired from the position at the Y Art Center, he established Bercone Gallery, New York City where he continued to paint, teach and exhibit. His work appears in many corporate, private and museum collections. The work measures 17 1/4" x 21 1/4" framed. Please email us for framed image.
More From This SellerView All
  • By Moonlight, E.E. Walton, Watercolor and Gouache, Figural, Landscape
    Located in Wiscasset, ME
    Eralso Errol Walton, known largely by his initials, E.E. Walton, during his professional life, was born in Cross Plains, Tennessee, around 1871. Walton's whereabouts from the 1880s i...
    Category

    Early 20th Century Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor, Gouache

  • "Night Fishing, " Mid-Century Modern Watercolor and Gouache Figures in a Boat
    Located in Wiscasset, ME
    "Night Fishing" is a mid-century modern watercolor and gouache depicting fishermen bringing in their catch by lantern at night. This painting measures 27.75" x 35.75" framed.
    Category

    Mid-20th Century Modern Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Gouache, Watercolor

  • Figures in a Meadow
    By William Brock
    Located in Wiscasset, ME
    Born in St. John’s Wood, London in 1874, landscape and animal painter William Brock studied at the Royal Academy and Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Brock exhibited at the Royal Acade...
    Category

    1920s Impressionist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor

  • "Traveler's Refreshment, " Albert Bellows, 19th c landscape, watercolor, realism
    By Albert Fitch Bellows
    Located in Wiscasset, ME
    Born in Milford, Massachusetts in 1829, Hudson River School artist Albert Fitch Bellows began his career as a student of architecture and was a pr...
    Category

    19th Century Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor

  • Figure by the Sea
    By Thomas William Morley
    Located in Wiscasset, ME
    A listed 19th century British artist and Barbizon School painter, Thomas W. Morley's Figure by the Sea captures the color, technique, softness of form and tonal qualities indicative ...
    Category

    Late 19th Century Barbizon School Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor

  • "Steamer Sail in the Harbor, " Warren Williams, British, watercolor, coastal
    By Warren Williams
    Located in Wiscasset, ME
    British artist Warren Williams was a painter and illustrator who studied under John Finnie at the Liverpool School of Art. Throughout his career, Williams exhibited nearly 100 works...
    Category

    1890s Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor

You May Also Like
  • "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

  • "Brick Layers" WPA American Scene Mid 20th Century Modern Drawing Men Working
    By David Fredenthal
    Located in New York, NY
    "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.
    Category

    1930s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor, Handmade Paper

  • Bridge Painter WPA American Modernism Mid 20th-Century Realism Industrial Worker
    By Louis Wolchonok
    Located in New York, NY
    Bridge Painter WPA American Modernism Mid 20th-Century Realism Industrial Worker. Sight size: 18 x 23 1/4 inches. Estate stamped verso. This drawing is the study for a large oil we ...
    Category

    1930s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor, Paper

  • 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

  • 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

Recently Viewed

View All