Mervin Jules

Chess Players WPA Depression Era Mid-20th Century American Scene Realism Modern

c. 1930s

Men Working Mural Study American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern Jo Cain (1904 – 2003) Men Working: WPA Mural Study 17 ½ x 10 ½ inches Oil on ...

"A Marro" WPA Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Modernism Ashcan. Signed lower right. Verso, label of Walker Galleries New York and signed in pencil and titled, A Marro....

WPA Mural Study 1940 American Scene Modern Social Realism Figurative Mid Century Michael Loew (1907-1985) Detail for Mural (Social Security Building Washington D.C.) 24 x 24 inches ...

"Old Shoemaker" Ashcan 20th Century Modernism 1924 California WPA Realism Worker. Signed “Otis Oldfield” lower left. 14 x 12 inches. Exhibited: Galerie des Beaux Arts, San Francisco, CA, 1925 Provenance: Estate of the Artist Born in Sacramento, CA on July 3, 1890, Otis Oldfield left high school at age 16 to work in a local print shop. In 1909 he arrived in San Francisco and enrolled at the Best Art School. After working for two years as a bellhop at the Argonaut Hotel and as a hat check boy at the Cliff House, he had saved enough money for further studies in Paris. In 1911 he sailed for France and enrolled at Académie Julian. Caught up in the activities of wartime Paris, he was an apprentice for a book...

Guy Pene du Bois' "Two Figures in Courtroom" is a WPA era American scene oil painting created in a realistic style. Modernism at its best The work is framed by Heydenryk. Pène du Bois descended from French immigrants who settled in Louisiana in 1738 and was raised in a Creole household. He was born in 1884 in Brooklyn, NY and first studied with William Merritt Chase at the New York School of Art and later continued his training with Robert Henri. Pène du Bois was greatly impressed with Henri's credo that "real life" was subject matter for art and throughout his life a realist philosophy informed his art as well as his parallel career, art criticism. In 1905, Pène du Bois made his first visit to Paris where he painted scenes of fashionable people in cafes rendered in the dark tonalities and impasto associated with the Ashcan School. By 1920, he had achieved his mature style, which was characterized by stylized, rounded, almost sculptural figures painted with invisible brushstrokes. The subjects of his paintings were often members of society whom he gently satirized. In 1924, Pène du Bois and his wife, Floy, left for France where they would remain until 1930. Returning to America showcases pictures the artist produced after this very productive period abroad. After five years of living in France, Pène du Bois was able to observe American life with fresh eyes. His work becomes more psychologically intense and less satirical. In Girl at Table a slender, blond is shown gazing at a small statue that she holds at arm's distance. The meaning is elusive, but a powerful sense of longing is evoked. Similarly, paintings such as Dramatic Moment and Jane are taut with unresolved dialogue. Both pictures depict mysterious interiors in which a lone woman anxiously awaits the denouement of a suspenseful scene. Other pictures, for example, Chess Tables, Washington Square and Bar, New Orleans, recall Pene du Bois's Ashcan origins in their depiction of urban entertainment. During this period, landscape becomes an important subject for Pène du Bois. Girl Sketching...

"Tailor" WPA American Scene Social Realism Modernism Mid Century Modern Fashion The board measures 9 1/2 x 15 1/2. Provenance: Mervin Jules Estate. Bio A painter, illustrator, pri...

Albert Pels (1910 - 1998) Three Engineers, circa 1935 Oil on board 10 x 13 1/2 inches Signed lower right Albert Pels was an art educator and painter of figures, genre scenes, urban ...

Born in New York City in 1959, Max Ferguson started as a filmmaker, making award-winning animated films as a teenager. But it was while he was a visiting student at an art school in ...

In the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the first decade of the twentieth, New York City art aficionados could count on finding recent work of Seymour Joseph Guy hanging on the walls of the city’s major galleries. Primarily a genre artist, but also a portraitist, between 1859 and 1908 Guy showed more than seventy works at the National Academy of Design. From 1871 to 1903 he contributed over seventy times to exhibitions at the Century Club. From 1864 to 1887, he sent about forty pictures to the Brooklyn Art Association. A good number of these works were already privately owned; they served as advertisements for other pictures that were available for sale. Some pictures were shown multiple times in the same or different venues. Guy was as easy to find as his canvases were omnipresent. Though he lived at first in Brooklyn with his family and then in New Jersey, from 1863 to his death in 1910 he maintained a studio at the Artist’s Studio Building at 55 West 10th Street, a location that was, for much of that period, the center of the New York City art world. Guy’s path to a successful career as an artist was by no means smooth or even likely. Born in Greenwich, England, he was orphaned at the age of nine. His early interest in art was discouraged by his legal guardian, who wanted a more settled trade for the young man. Only after the guardian also died was Guy free to pursue his intention of becoming an artist. The details of Guy’s early training in art are unclear. His first teacher is believed to have been Thomas Buttersworth...

Exhibited: National Academy of Design, New York, 1906 (as no. 101) Art Institute of Chicago, 1908 (as no. 74)

Zoe Hawk Artist Statement My work deals with the complex experience of girlhood, exploring adolescent anxiety, feminine identity, and belonging. These themes are tackled within scen...

Paul G. Oxborough's mastery as a painter has been firmly established over a decades-long career. His ability to render light in a room has been compared to the work of Velázquez; the...