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Robert Riggs'Children's Ward' — Socially-Conscious Realismc. 1940
c. 1940
$1,400
£1,075.07
€1,233.27
CA$1,967.16
A$2,203.10
CHF 1,149.54
MX$26,909.92
NOK 14,625.51
SEK 13,786.30
DKK 9,203.74
About the Item
Robert Riggs, 'Children's Ward', 2-color lithograph, c. 1940, edition c. 50, Beall 11, Bassham 76. Signed, titled, and numbered '14' in pencil. Signed in the stone, lower right. A superb, atmospheric impression, in warm black ink printed over pale gray on cream wove paper, with full margins (1 1/8 to 1 7/8 inches), in excellent condition. The 2-color printing produces exceptionally rich blacks and a wide range of subtle grays. Matted to museum standards, unframed.
Image size 14 3/16 x 18 15/16 inches; sheet size 17 1/8 x 22 7/8 inches.
An evocative period work of social conscience, the subject is the patients in the orthopedic section of St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, a pediatric acute care hospital located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded in 1875.
Exhibited: 'Printed Light: Photographic Vision and the Modern Print', National Gallery of Australia; 'Lasting Impressions: Lithography as Art, Part II', National Gallery of Australia.
Reproduced: 'American Lithographers, 1900-1960'; 'The Artists and Their Printers', Clinton Adams, The University of New Mexico Press, 1983; 'Representing America: The Ken Trevey Collection of American Realist Prints', University of California, Santa Barbara, 1995.
Impressions of this work are in the museum collection of the Library of Congress, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Washington State University Museum of Art, National Gallery of Australia, and Woodmere Art Museum (Philadelphia).
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Painter, printmaker, and illustrator Robert Riggs (1896-1970) is best known for his compelling, realistic images of the circus, boxing matches, and hospital wards. Riggs was born in Decatur, Illinois, beginning his art studies at Millikin University. At age nineteen, he won a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York City, and went on to work for the advertising firm A. W. Ayer & Company in Philadelphia. During World War I, Riggs served in France with a Red Cross hospital unit where he made numerous sketches of wounded soldiers—the suffering he witnessed informed his later social-conscious work in printmaking. While in France, Riggs studied at the Académie Julian, a private art academy favored by American expatriates.
Riggs returned to his pre-war job in Philadelphia and worked freelance in magazine illustration and advertising design. In 1924, he departed for international travel, making watercolor paintings of scenes in North Africa, China, Thailand, and the Caribbean islands. An exhibition of lithographs by George Bellows in 1931 inspired Riggs to make his prints of boxing subjects for which the older artist had gained renown. In 1933, Riggs' lithographs were presented in a solo show at the Frank Rehn Gallery, New York. Riggs subsequently turned to the circus subjects for which he gained further recognition, creating a series of fifteen prints. He later made four important lithographs on modern medical practices for pharmaceutical manufacturer Smith, Kline and French Corporation.
Of the eighty-four prints Riggs made over twenty years, most were produced between 1934 and 1936, when the challenging economic conditions of the Great Depression made prints particularly popular for their relatively low cost. Riggs gave up printmaking around 1950 but continued to produce black-and-white drawings commissioned for reproduction. Riggs was elected to associate membership in New York's venerable National Academy of Design in 1939, with full membership following in 1946, the year he was featured in a solo exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Between 1961 and 1963, Riggs taught at the Philadelphia College of Art (now The University of the Arts). He spent his later years in New York City, where he continued to create until he died in 1970.
Riggs's work is represented in prestigious institutions, including the British Museum (London), Cornell University, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, National Library of Medicine, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, UC Santa Barbara, U.S. Library of Congress, Washington State University, Woodmere Art Museum, and Yale Medical Library.
- Creator:Robert Riggs (1896 - 1970, American)
- Creation Year:c. 1940
- Dimensions:Height: 14.19 in (36.05 cm)Width: 18.94 in (48.11 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Myrtle Beach, SC
- Reference Number:Seller: 1039391stDibs: LU53237074382
Robert Riggs
Known for his scenes of prize-fighting and circus-genre, Robert Riggs had a highly successful career as an artist, especially in the ‘30s and ‘40s. His painting, The Brown Bomber, showed the boxing victory of Joe Louis over Max Schmeling. This is one of the paintings that earned Riggs election to the National Academy of Design in 1946. He was born in Decatur, Illinois, and as a young man ran away from home and joined the circus. He studied at the James Milliken University in Illinois and then trained at the Art Students League in New York, but his study was interrupted by Army service in the First World War. He attended the Académie Julian in Paris and then returned to the United States where he settled in Philadelphia and worked for N. W. Ayer & Sons, an advertising agency for whom he did numerous illustrations.
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