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Charles William SmithUntitled1939
1939
About the Item
Untitled
Color woodcut, 1939
Unsigned as issued
Signed and dedicated by the artist on the justification page (see photo)
From:
Abstractions By Charles Smith
Forward by Carl O. Schniewind
Published by The Johnson Company Publishers, New York, 1939
Edition: Unknown
Image size: 9 1/4 x 8 inches
Condition: Slight aging to the wove paper, barely noticeable
Provenance: Isaac Richard Singer, Virginia (see photo)
Alexander Mack Memorial Library, Bridgewater, VA (see photo)
Born in Lofton, Virginia, in 1893, Charles William Smith studied at the University of Virginia summer school, the Corcoran Art School, and Yale University's School of Fine Arts. He taught at the University of Virginia, the College of William and Mary, and the New York School of Printing. Smith moved to Richmond in 1925 where he worked as an artist for Whittet & Shepperson, a local printing firm. In 1929 he taught art at the Richmond Division of the College of William and Mary. For the next four years, Smith worked out of his apartment on Monument Avenue as a commercial artist. He became chair of the art department at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, in 1936 and taught there until 1947. Smith taught at the University of Virginia from 1947 until his retirement in 1963 and was the first chairman of the art department. Charles W. Smith died in Charlottesville in 1987.
Smith learned how to use gouges and chisels from his father, a patternmaker for local industries. Early in his career he turned to linoleum block printing. He explained in his 1926 book, Linoleum Block Printing, that the basic techniques for linoleum block and wood block were similar. The artist transferred his design to the block and then cut the design in relief. Areas not to be printed were cut away. The difference lay in the inability of the linoleum to permit fine lines or much detail. Linoleum blocks produced prints with large areas of color and minimal lines.
Carl O. Schniewind (1900-1957)
Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Brooklyn Museum from 1935 to 1940 and Art Institute of Chicago, 1940-1957. Schniewind was the son of a prominent chemical engineer in New York who studied art as a hobby. After the early death of his father, his mother returned to Germany with her two sons in 1914. In Germany he contracted tuberculosis and was treated in a Swiss sanitorium. He studied medicine at the Universities of Zürich and Bern, Switzerland, before changing fields into art history. He received his Ph.D. at the university in Heidelberg, Germany. Schniewind amassed an extensive collection of Daumier graphics and drawings, which he sold at auction in 1933. The same year he married Heidi Bretscher. The couple lived in Paris until 1935, when Schniewind joined the Brooklyn Museum's as librarian and curator of Department of Prints and Drawings, succeeding Susan Hutchinson (q.v.). During his tenure in Brooklyn he oversaw the formation of the Department of Prints and Drawings, which separated from the library collections in 1937. Schniewind acquired important European drawings, including those by Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, and Edgar Degas. He left the Museum in 1940 to head the Prints department at the Art Institute of Chicago, succeeded in Brooklyn in 1941 by Una Johnson (q.v.). At Chicago, Schniewind mounted the 1941 show "The First Century of Printmaking," writing a catalog with Fogg Museum curator Elizabeth Mongan (q.v.). In 1944, his Posada exhibition was one of the first in the United States to showcase this Mexican graphic artist. Schniewind understood the value of acquiring entire sketchbooks of artists. Under his direction, the AIC's department acquired the sketchbooks of Paul Cèzanne, Odion Redon, James Ensor, Theodore Gèricault and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, many of which were published as scholarly facsimilies. He also acquired important drawings by Rembrandt, Fragonard and Watteau. While one a buying and research trip in Italy, he died of complications of tuberculosis with which he had struggled his entire adult life. Schniewind was a connoisseur and scholar who took advantage of the works-on-paper art market to acquire magnificent examples of both modern and old-master prints and drawings.
- Creator:Charles William Smith (1893-1987, American)
- Creation Year:1939
- Dimensions:Height: 9.25 in (23.5 cm)Width: 8 in (20.32 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Fairlawn, OH
- Reference Number:
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