Ethel M. Dean

The Show is On

1940

Indolent Interlude, 1936, oil on board, signed and dated lower middle, 12 x 16 inches, signed verso and inscribed with title and date, exhibited Uncommissioned Portrait Exhibition, A...

Hollywood, 1941, oil on board, 18 x 24 inches, signed and dated lower right, illegible writing verso About the Painting From a distance, Beckwith deftly captures the spectacle of a Hollywood premiere. But we have not been invited to the party. Our view is from the shadows of a less glamorous neighborhood with a shaggy, unkept palm tree and rundown buildings in the shadows. We look down through the darkness past a packed parking lot to the bright lights of two iconic Hollywood landmarks, the Pantages Theater and the Broadway Building. Completed in 1930, the Pantages was built as an exuberant Art Deco movie palace, while the Broadway Building housed an upscale department store which catered to entertainment industry elites who were less impacted by the Great Depression than the common man, since movies had become the mainstay of popular culture entertainment during the 1930s with large numbers of Americans looking to immerse themselves in Hollywood escapism. Here, in a rare Los Angeles urban image, Beckwith combines that Hollywood fantasy with the more sobering foreground images which could have been pulled from the L.A. Noire fiction of Raymond Chandler...

Artist/ School: French School, mid 20th century Title: The Theatre Medium: watercolour on artists paper Size: painting: 12.5 x 9.25 inches Provenance: private collection...

An original 1942 oil on board painting by American female artist Catherine Koenig depicting the interior of the Buffalo Art Institute which was home to the legendary Charles Burchfie...