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Streeter Blair
"Overholser Family, 1890, Sterling, Illinois" Streeter Blair, 1949 Painting

1949

About the Item

Streeter Blair Overholser Family, 1890, Sterling, Illinois, 1949 Signed, titled, and dated lower left Oil on canvas 8 x 10 inches Primitive painter Streeter Blair is renowned for his naive, sentimental depictions of America's past. In mood and style, his paintings of children, little villages, farmhouses, buggies, and historical events are comparable to Grandma Moses's. Blair's early years spent on a farm in Cadmus, Kansas, are depicted in a number of his paintings. Others recreate historical scenes, such the first electric streetlight in Los Angeles and a street in Virginia City, Nevada, a town that was a gold rush town. His topics are thoroughly investigated and precise down to the last detail. After a lifetime of pursuing various interests as a school principal, teacher, coach, editor, and eventually owner of an antique shop, Blair finally realized he could paint at the age of sixty. He painted partly because he needed to describe the barns and farmhouses in Pennsylvania where he bought his antiques. He claimed to have painted a painting of one of these barns and displayed it at the antique store. After inquiring if it was for sale, a female buyer paid $25 for it. Blair had some prior artistic experience, but this was the beginning of his artistic career. He produced the content and contributed some graphics for the boys' magazine The Knicker, which he published in the 1920s and 1930s. Blair abandoned nearly everything else to paint for the following eighteen years, developing a reputation as a highly skilled yet archaic painter. Up until 1961, he kept up his antique business in Los Angeles and Leucadia. A Beverly Hills art gallery exhibited Blair's work retrospectively in 1970, a few years after his passing, and sold paintings for as much as $25,000. Blair, like Grandma Moses, declined to receive traditional painting training, which is evident in the way he handles shadowing, perspective, and scale relativity. His people are frequently bigger than their horses, and his rivers appear to flow uphill. The joy of childhood, as recalled by an adult who has chosen to forget the struggles of living in rural America at the turn of the century, is depicted in his work with a charming, nostalgic glow. Blair was a lively man who had friends all the time. They would gather around his fireplace, sip coffee, eat the bread he had baked that won an award, and listen to his stories about his time in Kansas. This group included a number of avant-garde artists, such as Billy Al Bengston and Edward Kienholz. Examples of Blair's work can be found in a number of private collections as well as public collections such as the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the University of Kansas, Spencer Art Museum; the Hirschhorn Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, San Diego; the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
  • Creator:
    Streeter Blair (1888 - 1966, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1949
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 8 in (20.32 cm)Width: 10 in (25.4 cm)
  • More Editions & Sizes:
    Unique WorkPrice: $4,800
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Framing:
    Framing Options Available
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    New York, NY
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU1841215802932

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