George Wesley Bellows

"Business-Men's Class, Y.M.C.A." George Bellows, Ashcan School Print

1916

Doris Lee Thanksgiving, 1942 Signed lower right, titled lower left Lithograph on paper Image 8 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches Sheet 12 x 17 inches From the edition of 250 An American Scene pai...

Jacob Lawrence (1917 - 2000) The Capture of Marmelade (from The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture series), 1987 Color screenprint on Bainbridge Two Ply Rag paper Sheet 32 1/8 x 22 1/16 inches Sight 29 3/4 x 19 1/4 inches A/P 1/30, aside from the edition of 120 Signed, titled, dated, inscribed "A/P" and numbered 1/30 in pencil, lower margin. Literature: Nesbett L87-2. A social realist, Lawrence documented the African American experience in several series devoted to Toussaint L’Ouverture, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, life in Harlem, and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He was one of the first nationally recognized African American artists. “If at times my productions do not express the conventionally beautiful, there is always an effort to express the universal beauty of man’s continuous struggle to lift his social position and to add dimension to his spiritual being.” — Jacob Lawrence quoted in Ellen Harkins Wheat, Jacob Lawrence: The Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman Series of 1938 – 40. The most widely acclaimed African American artist of this century, and one of only several whose works are included in standard survey books on American art, Jacob Lawrence has enjoyed a successful career for more than fifty years. Lawrence’s paintings portray the lives and struggles of African Americans, and have found wide audiences due to their abstract, colorful style and universality of subject matter. By the time he was thirty years old, Lawrence had been labeled as the ​“foremost Negro artist,” and since that time his career has been a series of extraordinary accomplishments. Moreover, Lawrence is one of the few painters of his generation who grew up in a black community, was taught primarily by black artists, and was influenced by black people. Lawrence was born on September 7, 1917,* in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He was the eldest child of Jacob and Rosa Lee Lawrence. The senior Lawrence worked as a railroad cook and in 1919 moved his family to Easton, Pennsylvania, where he sought work as a coal miner. Lawrence’s parents separated when he was seven, and in 1924 his mother moved her children first to Philadelphia and then to Harlem when Jacob was twelve years old. He enrolled in Public School 89 located at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue, and at the Utopia Children’s Center, a settlement house that provided an after school program in arts and crafts for Harlem children. The center was operated at that time by painter Charles Alston who immediately recognized young Lawrence’s talents. Shortly after he began attending classes at Utopia Children’s Center, Lawrence developed an interest in drawing simple geometric patterns and making diorama type paintings from corrugated cardboard boxes. Following his graduation from P.S. 89, Lawrence enrolled in Commerce High School on West 65th Street and painted intermittently on his own. As the Depression became more acute, Lawrence’s mother lost her job and the family had to go on welfare. Lawrence dropped out of high school before his junior year to find odd jobs to help support his family. He enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal jobs program, and was sent to upstate New York. There he planted trees, drained swamps, and built dams. When Lawrence returned to Harlem he became associated with the Harlem Community Art Center directed by sculptor Augusta Savage, and began painting his earliest Harlem scenes. Lawrence enjoyed playing pool at the Harlem Y.M.C.A., where he met ​“Professor” Seifert, a black, self styled lecturer and historian who had collected a large library of African and African American literature. Seifert encouraged Lawrence to visit the Schomburg Library in Harlem to read everything he could about African and African American culture. He also invited Lawrence to use his personal library, and to visit the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition of African art in 1935. As the Depression continued, circumstances remained financially difficult for Lawrence and his family. Through the persistence of Augusta Savage, Lawrence was assigned to an easel project with the W.P.A., and still under the influence of Seifert, Lawrence became interested in the life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the black revolutionary and founder of the Republic of Haiti. Lawrence felt that a single painting would not depict L’Ouverture’s numerous achievements, and decided to produce a series of paintings on the general’s life. Lawrence is known primarily for his series of panels on the lives of important African Americans in history and scenes of African American life. His series of paintings include: The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, 1937, (forty one panels), The Life of Frederick Douglass, 1938, (forty panels), The Life of Harriet Tubman, 1939, (thirty one panels), The Migration of the Negro,1940 – 41, (sixty panels), The Life of John Brown, 1941, (twenty two panels), Harlem, 1942, (thirty panels), War, 1946 47, (fourteen panels), The South, 1947, (ten panels), Hospital, 1949 – 50, (eleven panels), Struggle: History of the American People, 1953 – 55, (thirty panels completed, sixty projected). Lawrence’s best known series is The Migration of the Negro, executed in 1940 and 1941. The panels portray the migration of over a million African Americans from the South to industrial cities in the North between 1910 and 1940. These panels, as well as others by Lawrence, are linked together by descriptive phrases, color, and design. In November 1941 Lawrence’s Migration series was exhibited at the prestigious Downtown Gallery in New York. This show received wide acclaim, and at the age of twenty four Lawrence became the first African American artist to be represented by a downtown ​“mainstream” gallery. During the same month Fortune magazine published a lengthy article about Lawrence, and illustrated twenty six of the series’ sixty panels. In 1943 the Downtown Gallery exhibited Lawrence’s Harlem series, which was lauded by some critics as being even more successful than the Migration panels. In 1937 Lawrence obtained a scholarship to the American Artists School in New York. At about the same time, he was also the recipient of a Rosenwald Grant for three consecutive years. In 1943 Lawrence joined the U.S. Coast Guard and was assigned to troop ships that sailed to Italy and India. After his discharge in 1945, Lawrence returned to painting the history of African American people. In the summer of 1947 Lawrence taught at the innovative Black Mountain College in North Carolina at the invitation of painter Josef Albers. During the late 1940s Lawrence was the most celebrated African American painter in America. Young, gifted, and personable, Lawrence presented the image of the black artist who had truly ​“arrived”. Lawrence was, however, somewhat overwhelmed by his own success, and deeply concerned that some of his equally talented black artist friends had not achieved a similar success. As a consequence, Lawrence became deeply depressed, and in July 1949 voluntarily entered Hillside Hospital in Queens, New York, to receive treatment. He completed the Hospital series while at Hillside. Following his discharge from the hospital in 1950, Lawrence resumed painting with renewed enthusiasm. In 1960 he was honored with a retrospective exhibition and monograph prepared by The American Federation of Arts. He also traveled to Africa twice during the 1960s and lived primarily in Nigeria. Lawrence taught for a number of years at the Art Students League in New York, and over the years has also served on the faculties of Brandeis University, the New School for Social Research, California State College at Hayward, the Pratt Institute, and the University of Washington, Seattle, where he is currently Professor Emeritus of Art. In 1974 the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York held a major retrospective of Lawrence’s work that toured nationally, and in December 1983 Lawrence was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The most recent retrospective of Lawrence’s paintings was organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2020, and was accompanied by a major catalogue. Lawrence met his wife Gwendolyn Knight...

Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) La Danse Barbare (from La Suite des Saltimbanques), 1905, printed 1913 Etching on Van Gelder Zonen wove paper Sheet 13 x 20 inches From the edition of 250...

Amy Londoner Beach at Atlantic City, circa 1922 Signed lower right Pastel on paper Sight 23 x 18 inches Amy Londoner (April 12, 1875 – 1951) was an American painter who exhibited at...

Amy Londoner Musical Conductor, 1922 Signed and dated lower right Pastel on paper Sight 18 x 23 inches Amy Londoner (April 12, 1875 – 1951) was an American painter who exhibited at ...

Amy Londoner Beach at Atlantic City, circa 1922 Signed lower right Pastel on paper Sight 23 x 18 inches Amy Londoner (April 12, 1875 – 1951) was an American painter who exhibited at...

Mostly known linocuts that combine social subjects with a modernist figure-ground style, Jacobi proves that 'artists have hands.' By that my old boss Sylvan Cole meant that even if they have a preferred medium, like Jacobi with linocut, they could do just about anything. And here the artist has made a New Jersey subject shine. The Raritan Bridge of course goes over the Raritan River that flows from the inland mountains (well, hills) of New Jersey to the Raritan Bay and then into the Atlantic Ocean. It was stolen from the Lenape by the Dutch and fought over by the English. It's role in American Industrial History is the stuff of legends. With the addition of a canal it transported anthracite coal from Pennsylvania helping to make the this part of New Jersey into a financial powerhouse. Sadly industry also polluted the entire region but now there is on-going restoration. Of course the bridge is also known to riders of the New Jersey Coast Line and drivers on the Garden State Parkway -- both take travelers 'down the shore,' This twist of heavy industry...

Frederick K. Detwiller, 'The Sixth Avenue Spur, New York City', lithograph, 1924, edition 20. Signed, dated, titled, and annotated 'Lith 20' in pencil. Inscribed 'To my Friend Herbert L. Jones' in pencil. Signed and dated, in the stone, lower right; initialed and dated '1927' in the stone, lower left. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, with margins (7/8 to 1 1/4 inches); slight toning in the top left sheet edge, otherwise in good condition. Scarce. Image size 20 1/2 x 14 inches (521 x 356 mm); sheet size 22 1/2 x 16 inches (572 x 406 mm). Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed. ABOUT THE IMAGE The Sixth Avenue El was constructed in the late 1870s by the Gilbert Elevated Railway and reorganized as the Metropolitan Elevated Railway. By 1878, it was running from Rector Street to 58th Street. Soon after that, it was taken over by the Manhattan Railway Company, with three other Manhattan elevated train lines. The company built a connection, the ‘spur’ by which it turned west on 53rd Street to merge with the 9th Avenue El—paralleling the present-day route of the 6th Avenue subway. The Sixth Avenue El served the “Ladies Mile” shops (including the Siegel-Cooper emporium, whose building now houses Bed...

Glenn O. Coleman, 'Hurdy Gurdy Ballet', lithograph 1928, edition 50. Signed, dated, and numbered '14/50' in pencil. Titled in the bottom left margin, in a...

Originally from Illinois, Ann Michalov worked in Spokane, Seattle and Portland, where she finally settled. This lithograph however really looks very like New York City's Central Park...

Ben Messick perfectly captures the world of the 'Ashcan' period: Everyday life, local characters, people we could still meet today. He could draw like a son-of-a-gun! The date of 194...

Lawrence Beall Smith draws four men in a park, each with his back to a giant, strong tree. The year is 1938 and the country is coming out of the Depression but World War II is alread...