Robert Blackburn

Reclining Nude — Mid-Century Modernism, Renowned African American Artist

c. 1948

Leon Bibel, 'Untitled (War Machine)', brush and ink, c. 1936. Estate stamped, verso. A fine expressionist rendering, on cream wove drawing board, with marg...

Robert Philipp, 'Self-Portrait with Black Hat', ink and color pastel, c. 1945. Signed in ink, lower right. A fine, spontaneous drawing, on heavy, buff wove paper; the artist's tack holes in the top and bottom left sheet corners, minor rippling in the bottom sheet edge; otherwise in good condition. Image size 16 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches; sheet size 19 1/4 x 12 3/4 inches. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Provenance: Art Students League, from the artist’s personal portfolio. ABOUT THE ARTIST Robert Philipp (1895–1981) was a celebrated American Post-Impressionist painter known for his nudes, still lifes, and portraits. Noted art critic Henry McBride named Philipp one of America's top six painters of his generation. Philipp was an instructor of painting at the Art Students League, New York, for 33 years. Philipp was Secretary of the National Academy of Design, a National Academician, and a Benjamin Franklin Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts in London. His composition and painting style has been compared to the art of Edgar Degas and Pierre Auguste Renoir. In 1940, Philipp was invited to Los Angeles by Hollywood producer Louis B. Mayer to paint portraits of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie stars. The same year, Walter Wanger, producer of ‘The Long Voyage Home’, directed by John Ford and based on plays by Eugene O'Neill, contracted with Reeves Lewenthal, head of the Associated American Artists gallery in Manhattan, to bring nine well-known artists to the set and paint scenes from the movie and portraits of the actors in character. The artists included Robert Philipp, Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Ernest Fiene, George Schreiber, Luis...

Charles Elmer Harris (Beni E. Kosh), Untitled (Central Railroad), watercolor, c. 1945. Estate stamped verso, 'Beni E Kosh COLLECTION' and numbered '697' in ink. A fine, modernist re...

Irving Lehman, Untitled (Woodland Reflection), watercolor, c. 1955. Unsigned, with the artist's estate stamp verso: 'Original Artwork By: IRVING G. LEHMAN Russian/American 1900-1982'...

"Marc Chagall" Original Drawing Illustration Caricature William Saroyan book This drawing was published in the 1976 edition of William Saroyan's SONS ...

"Mission Impossible" Original TV Guide Drawing Illustration Caricature Mid Century NYC with Greg Morris, Barbara Bain, and Steve Hill. This original drawing...

Magazine Cover Illustration Mid 20th Century Modern Theatre Broadway Realism WPA Ernest Hamlin Baker (1889 – 1975) “Today Magazine” Cover ...

Family at the Beach WPA Modernism American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century William Gropper (1898 - 1977) "Family at the Beach" 27 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches Mixed media on paper, c. 1940 Signed lower left Provenance: Estate of the artist. The drawing will ship from the home of Mr. Gropper's grandson. Bio Throughout his life, William Gropper used his artistic talents to protest social injustice. Born in New York City, he grew up there in poverty and left high school to work as a dishwasher and delivery boy. He eventually began a career in art and was able to study with Robert Henri and George Bellows from 1912 to 1915. He adopted their realistic painting style, and his own work expressed sympathy for common laborers and outrage at society's ills. In 1919 Gropper established a reputation as a political cartoonist working for the New York Tribune. His blunt, forceful style attracted the attention of other publications, and he provided illustrations and cartoons for a variety of magazines, from the left-wing New Masses to mainstream Vanity Fair. Like many social realist artists of the 1930s, Gropper supported liberal political causes, depicting subjects such as the plight of migrant laborers and striking factory workers. In his first gallery exhibition in 1936 at ACA Galleries, Gropper's work was so well received by critics, collectors, and artists that the following year he had two one-man exhibitions at ACA Galleries. In 1937, Gropper traveled west on a Guggenheim Fellowship and visited the Dust Bowl and the Hoover and Grand Coulee Dams, sketching studies for a series of paintings and a mural he painted for the Department of the Interior. That same year he had paintings purchased by both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. Gropper exhibited at the 1939 New York World's Fair, Whitney Museum of American Art (1924-55), Art Institute of Chicago (1935-49), Carnegie International (1937-50), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1939-48), and National Academy of Design (1945-48). He was a founder of the Artists Equity Association and member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. From 1940 to 1945 William Gropper was preoccupied with anti-Nazi cartoons...