Ethel M. Dean

The Show is On

1940

This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s. The Landing/Dawn Landing, 1944, oil on canvas, signed lower left, 20 x 30, titled verso; exhibited in the Twelfth Annual Exhibition of Trends in Southern California Art at the Foundation of Western Art, Los Angeles, from early November to December 30, 1944 (see Millier, Arthur, Trends Show Attracts Best Southland Art, The Los Angeles Times, part III, p.6, November 4, 1944, illustrated in Edward Biberman, Time and Circumstance: Forty Years of Painting by Edward Biberman, The Ward Ritchie Press, Los Angeles (1968), p. 57, presented in its original frame The Landing/Dawn Landing is a rare and critically acclaimed example of Edward Biberman's World War II paintings...

This painting is part of our current exhibition - America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s Untitled (Elevated Platform), 1950, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, 30 x...

The Demagogue or Tale in a Tub, 1952, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches, signed, titled, and dated verso, presented in a newer frame The Demagogue is an iconic Bendor Mark painting fro...

Six O-Clock, c. 1942, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, signed and titled several times verso of frame and stretcher (perhaps by another hand), marked “Rehn” several times on frame (for the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York City, who represented Craig at the time); Exhibited: 1) 18th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings from March 21 to May 2, 1943 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. #87, original price $450 (per catalog) (exhibition label verso), 2) Craig’s one-man show at the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, New York City, from October 26 to November 14, 1942, #10 (original price listed as $350); and 3) Exhibition of thirty paintings sponsored by the Harrisburg Art Association at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg in March, 1944 (concerning this exhibit, Penelope Redd of The Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) wrote: “Other paintings that have overtones of superrealism inherent in the subjects include Tom Craig’s California nocturne, ‘Six O’Clock,’ two figures moving through the twilight . . . .” March 6, 1944, p. 13); another label verso from The Museum of Art of Toledo (Ohio): original frame: Provenance includes George Stern Gallery, Los Angeles, CA About the Painting Long before Chris Burden’s iconic installation outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Urban Light, another artist, Tom Craig, made Southern California streetlights the subject of one of his early 1940s paintings. Consisting of dozens of recycled streetlights from the 1920s and 1930s forming a classical colonnade at the museum’s entrance, Burden’s Urban Light has become a symbol of Los Angeles. For Burden, the streetlights represent what constitutes an advanced society, something “safe after dark and beautiful to behold.” It seems that Craig is playing on the same theme in Six O-Clock. Although we see two hunched figures trudging along the sidewalk at the end of a long day, the real stars of this painting are the streetlights which brighten the twilight and silhouette another iconic symbol of Los Angeles, the palm trees in the distance. Mountains in the background and the distant view of a suburban neighborhood join the streetlights and palm trees as classic subject matter for a California Scene painting, but Craig gives us a twist by depicting the scene not as a sun-drenched natural expanse. Rather, Craig uses thin layers of oil paint, mimicking the watercolor technique for which he is most famous, to show us the twinkling beauty of manmade light and the safety it affords. Although Southern California is a land of natural wonders, the interventions of humanity are already everywhere in Los Angeles and as one critic noted, the resulting painting has an air of “superrealism.” About the Artist Thomas Theodore Craig was a well-known fixture in the Southern California art scene. He was born in Upland California. Craig graduated with a degree in botany from Pomona College and studied painting at Pamona and the Chouinard Art School with Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Barse Miller among others. He became close friends with fellow artist Milford Zornes...

Bay Area School figurative of a cowboy and hats by Berkeley artist Patricia Gren Hayes (American, b- 1932), circa 1983. Signed "Gren Hayes 1983" upper center and signed and titled "Cowboy Boots" on verso. Unframed. Size: 16"H x 20"W. Bay Area Figurative...

Mid Century figurative painting of a pensive sitting nude figure with moody, mid-century color palette in the background. Attributed to Elmer S. Albritton, unsigned (American, 1922-...

Provenance The artist; Collection of Walter Stuempfig, Philadelphia; Private collection, Massachusetts until 2022 The Philadelphia modernist Arthur B. Carles was a brilliant coloris...

From the Michael Hall Collection, this is a great American scene showing the excitement of the fair. It depicts a time when men wore coats and ties and women had hats at the fair be...