Henry Ernst Schnakenberg

Boys Swimming Industrial Landscape WPA Mid 20th Century Social Realism Modernism

1940s

Bathers 1940s Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism WPA Modern Ashcan Marion Gilmore (1909-1984) Bathers 15 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches oil on canvas boar...

Industrial Landscape Contemporary American Watercolor Magic Realism 20th Century Henry Koerner (1915-1991) J&L Oxygen Plant 18 x 24 1/2 inches Watercolo...

"Summer Pier Fishing" American Scene Social Realism WPA Mid-20th Century Modern Syd J. Browne (1907-1991) "Summer Pier Fishing" 22 x 30 inches Oil on canvas. c. 1930s Signed lower r...

"Industrial Cityscape, Chicago" WPA Modernism Mid-Century Cityscape 20th Century Aaron Bohrod (American 1907 – 1992) Industrial Cityscape 20 x 16 inches Oil on board Signed lower ri...

William Sharp (1900 - 1961) Factory on the River Oil on canvas 20 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches Initialed lower left: WS Provenance: Estate of the artist Private Collection, New York Swann Auction Galleries, American Art, June 13, 2019, Lot 178 Private Collection, New York Colonial Sand and Stone Co., founded by Generoso Pope, was once the country’s largest sand and gravel business, providing the concrete for much of New York City’s skyline, including the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, airports and subways. William Sharp was born on June 13, 1900, in Lemberg, Austria, where he attended college and the Academy for Arts and Industry. He later studied in Kraków, Poland, and in Berlin and Munich, Germany. Sharp began his career as a designer of stained-glass windows and as a painter of murals. He served in the German army during World War I. After the war he became a newspaper artist in Berlin and a well-known etcher. Sharp drew political cartoons that were bitterly critical of the growing Nazi movement. As the influence of National Socialism intensified, he began to contribute drawings, under a pseudonym, to publications that were hostile to Hitler. After Hitler assumed power, Sharp was confronted with these drawings and told that he would be sent to a concentration camp. However, in 1934, he escaped to the United States. His first newspaper assignment in America was making courtroom sketches for The New York Mirror...

A detailed mid century industrial seascape of Gloucester, MA Harbor scene with boats and the Old Paint Works by Charles Johnson (American, b. 1874), c. 1940. Signed lower left corner...

This painting is a 20th century realist landscape depiction of a shipyard by Robert Lavin. The piece is executed in oil on board and measures 10" x 24". Robert Lavin was born in New York City. His education included Townsend Harris, a prep school in New York followed by college at City College of New York. He also attended the National Academy of Art, where he studied as a painter. Studying the social realists of the 1930’s, Lavin, a former Marine pilot, portrayed steelworkers, roughnecks and trainmen. Lavin often painted his “proletarian ballets”- as one critic called them – to illustrate magazine advertisements. The Smithsonian Institution and other museums collected Lavin’s original paintings, which portrayed the laboring subjects with dignity and integrity. Lavin also illustrated stock certificates and books. Paper Money magazine praised him as “one of the greatest vignette artists of the 20th century.” In addition to this, Lavin was for a number of years an Associate Professor of Art at City College of New York, a position he left in the mid ‘60’s in order to devote himself full time to his painting. His commissions took him around the world, from the North Sea to the coast of Africa, from the slopes of Alaska to the Sea of Japan. As part of a series for Gulf Oil, he painted the royal family of England for the opening of a new refinery in Wales. Another portrait of one of the early Americanastronauts, appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. Other major commissions during these years included Readers Digest books...

Signed lower left, "Wesley Wright", and painted circa 1960. A substantial, mid-century watercolor view of an industrial area with grain containers and smokestacks.