American Realist Art
to
14
179
57
8
84
73
2
91
23
21
12
13
Overall Height
to
Overall Width
to
2,265
566
377
209
111
102
96
91
22
16
3
127
75
56
56
37
30
14
11
10
10
9
8
8
6
5
5
5
4
4
4
116
1,891
1,926
19
53
73
180
196
287
195
206
187
61
12
9
6
5
4
72
37
35
35
34
Style: American Realist
Period: 1930s
George Washington Marine Procession New York Presidential Inauguration, Life Mag
By Robert Riggs
Located in Miami, FL
"The Great Man Comes to Take His Oath" Life Magazine Spread, July 4th, 1960, This epic narrative depicts the celebration of George Washington's inauguration, en route to Federal Hall...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Oil
COMING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN
Located in Santa Monica, CA
THOMAS HART BENTON (1889-1975)
COMING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN (MISSOURI MUSICIANS) 1931 (Fath 4)
Lithograph, signed in pencil. Although Fath indicates an edition of 75, it is numbered ...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Lithograph
Rubenesque nude woman . full figure Nude Regionalism - "Hilda Nellis"
Located in Miami, FL
Plump or fleshy and voluptuous nude... you can describe it as you see it. Signed, titled and dated lower left: John Steuart Curry / 1934 "Hilda Nellis",
John Steuart Curry is best ...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Oil
Chess Players WPA Depression Era Mid-20th Century American Scene Realism Modern
By Mervin Jules
Located in New York, NY
Chess Players WPA Depression Era Mid-20th Century American Scene Realism Modern. Signed upper right and verso 8 x 10 inches oil on board.
BIO
The son of a men's haberdasher, Mervin ...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Oil, Board
Pretzel Woman
Located in Raleigh, NC
Beatrice Mandelman was an important artist in the New York WPA and this print was don for the WPA, but is unstamped.
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Lithograph
Low Country
Located in Raleigh, NC
Elizabeth O'Neil Verner etching titled "Low Country" lower left and signed in pencil lower right beneath the image.
Excellent condition with large margins.
A richly inked impression ...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Etching
Looking Up Meeting Street - Charleston
Located in Raleigh, NC
Looking Up Meeting Street - Charleston by Elizabeth o'details showing.
A dark richly inked impression with all the fine ddetails showing.
Some light staining as shown in the photos.
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Etching
St. Michael's Alley (Looking East)
Located in Raleigh, NC
St. Michael's Alley Looking East by Elizabeth o'Neill Verner.
This impression #25 from an edition of probably 50.
Slight light staining as shown in the photos
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Etching
Court House Square
Located in Raleigh, NC
Court House Square by Elizabeth O'Neill Verner.
This impression numbered 8 from an edition of probably 50 -100.
Slight light darkening of the image.
A dark richly inked impression.
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Etching
Wuxtry! [Extra!]
Located in New York, NY
Albert Abramovitz (1879-1963), Wuxtry! [Extra?!], linocut in colors, c. 1936, signed in pencil lower right and titled lower center [also initialed in the plate]. In very good conditi...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Linocut
WPA Post Office Mural Study Native American Scene Regionalism Social Realism
Located in New York, NY
WPA Post Office Mural Study Native American Scene Regionalism Social Realism
Louise Emerson Ronnebeck (1901 - 1980)
Proposal Sketch for Worland Wyoming Post Office WPA Mural Project
Image: 7 x 15 inches
Board 14 x 22 inches
Watercolor on paper, attached to black/gray cardboard/thick paper
c. 1937
Signed lower right
Written in Louise's hand on mounting paper in white chalk/pencil: "Sketch for Mural...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Paper, Cardboard, Watercolor
Men In the Park
By Eugene Fitsch
Located in Raleigh, NC
A WPA Era lithograph by Eugene Fitsch published by the American Artist School in New York, with a facsimile signature lower right below the image.
Depicted are probably unemployed me...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Lithograph
Bridge Construction with Philadelphia Museum
Located in Raleigh, NC
A rare etching by Frederick W. Haupte of the Delaware River and the Philadelphia Art Museum in the background.
A richly evenly inked impression with strong plate mark.
There are lig...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Etching
Tug Boats
By Ron Blumberg
Located in West Hollywood, CA
One of the rarest paintings from American artist Ron Blumbergs New York series, "Tug Boats", has just arrived.
Ron Blumberg was classically trained at La G...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Oil
MORNING IN YOSEMITE
Located in Santa Monica, CA
HAROLD L. DOOLITTLE (1883 - 1974)
MORNING IN YOSEMITE c 1938
Aquatint, signed and titled in pencil by the artist. Plate size 13 3/8 x 9 3/4". Sheet 16 x 11 1/8" with deckle edges.
Doolittle was a renaissance man. His day job was as an engineer for the Edison Electric Co. But he produced an outstanding body of prints for 5 decades as well as photographs. His very rare arts and crafts furniture is highly sought after. He was a long time member and officer in the California Print...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Aquatint
Pennies
Located in Raleigh, NC
RgrFineArts is pleased to offer this rare WPA lithograph of African American children collecting coins from a fountain, likely in New York.
This print...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Lithograph
PHOEBE PASSES MY GATE
Located in Portland, ME
Hutty, Alfred. PHOEBE PASSES MY GATE.
Drypoint, c. 1931. Edition size c.75.
8 1/8 x 7 1/4 inches (plate), 10 1/4 x 8 3/4 inches (sheet).
Printed on laid paper. In excellent condit...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Drypoint
Black and White Etching Travel 1930's Realism Water Industrial Outdoors Signed
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Fishing Boats Gloucester" is a soft ground etching created by Joseph Margulies. The artist signed this piece in the lower right margin with graphite. This piece depicts several fish...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Ink, Etching, Aquatint
Eileen Lake
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Eileen Lake
Crayon on paper, early1930's
Initialed in pencil lower right (see photo)
Titled and annotated verso "Eileen Lake, early 1930s girlfriend"
Note: Eileen Hall Lake was an American poet and Adolf Dehn's girlfriend in the early 1930s.
Provenance:
Estate of the artist
By descent
Adolf Dehn, American Watercolorist and Printmaker, 1895-1968
Adolf Dehn was an artist who achieved extraordinary artistic heights, but in a very particular artistic sphere—not so much in oil painting as in watercolor and lithography. Long recognized as a master by serious print collectors, he is gradually gaining recognition as a notable and influential figure in the overall history of American art.
In the 19th century, with the invention of the rotary press, which made possible enormous print runs, and the development of the popular, mass-market magazines, newspaper and magazine illustration developed into an artistic realm of its own, often surprisingly divorced from the world of museums and art exhibitions, and today remains surprisingly overlooked by most art historians. Dehn in many regards was an outgrowth of this world, although in an unusual way, since as a young man he produced most of his illustrative work not for popular magazines, such as The Saturday Evening Post, but rather for radical journals, such as The Masses or The Liberator, or artistic “little magazines” such as The Dial. This background established the foundation of his outlook, and led later to his unique and distinctive contribution to American graphic art.
If there’s a distinctive quality to his work, it was his skill in introducing unusual tonal and textural effects into his work, particularly in printmaking but also in watercolor. Jackson Pollock seems to have been one of many notable artists who were influenced by his techniques.
Early Years, 1895-1922
For an artist largely remembered for scenes of Vienna and Paris, Adolf Dehn’s background was a surprising one. Born in Waterville, Minnesota, on November 22, 1895, Dehn was the descendent of farmers who had emigrated from Germany and homesteaded in the region, initially in a one-room log cabin with a dirt floor. Adolf’s father, Arthur Clark Dehn, was a hunter and trapper who took pride that he had no boss but himself, and who had little use for art. Indeed, during Adolf’s boyhood the walls of his bedroom and the space under his bed were filled with the pelts of mink, muskrats and skunks that his father had killed, skinned and stretched on drying boards. It was Adolf’s mother, Emilie Haas Dehn, a faithful member of the German Lutheran Evangelical Church, who encouraged his interest in art, which became apparent early in childhood. Both parents were ardent socialists, and supporters of Eugene Debs. In many ways Dehn’s later artistic achievement was clearly a reaction against the grinding rural poverty of his childhood.
After graduating from high school in 1914 at the age of 19—an age not unusual in farming communities at the time, where school attendance was often irregular—Dehn attended the Minneapolis School of Art from 1914 to 1917, whose character followed strongly reflected that of its director, Munich-trained Robert Kohler, an artistic conservative but a social radical. There Dehn joined a group of students who went on to nationally significant careers, including Wanda Gag (later author of best-selling children’s books); John Flanagan (a sculptor notable for his use of direct carving) Harry Gottlieb (a notable social realist and member of the Woodstock Art Colony), Elizabeth Olds (a printmaker and administrator for the WPA), Arnold Blanch (landscape, still-life and figure painter, and member of the Woodstock group), Lucille Lunquist, later Lucille Blanch (also a gifted painter and founder of the Woodstock art colony), and Johan Egilrud (who stayed in Minneapolis and became a journalist and poet).
Adolf became particularly close to Wanda Gag (1893-1946), with whom he established an intense but platonic relationship. Two years older than he, Gag was the daughter of a Bohemian artist and decorator, Anton Gag, who had died in 1908. After her husband died, Wanda’s mother, Lizzi Gag, became a helpless invalid, so Wanda was entrusted with the task of raising and financially supporting her six younger siblings. This endowed her with toughness and an independent streak, but nonetheless, when she met Dehn, Wanda was Victorian and conventional in her artistic taste and social values. Dehn was more socially radical, and introduced her to radical ideas about politics and free love, as well as to socialist publications such as The Masses and The Appeal to Reason.
Never very interested in oil painting, in Minneapolis Dehn focused on caricature and illustration--often of a humorous or politically radical character. In 1917 both Dehn and Wanda won scholarships to attend the Art Students League, and consequently, in the fall of that year both moved to New York. Dehn’s art education, however, ended in the summer of 1918, shortly after the United States entered World War I, when he was drafted to serve in the U. S. Army. Unwilling to fight, he applied for status as a conscientious objector, but was first imprisoned, then segregated in semi-imprisonment with other Pacifists, until the war ended. The abuse he suffered at this time may well explain his later withdrawal from taking political stands or making art of an overtly political nature. After his release from the army, Dehn returned to New York where he fell under the spell of the radical cartoonist Boardman Robinson and produced his first lithographs. He also finally consummated his sexual relationship with Wanda Gag.
The Years in Europe: 1922-1929
In September of 1921, however, he abruptly departed for Europe, arriving in Paris and then moving on to Vienna. There in the winter of 1922 he fell in love with a Russian dancer, Mura Zipperovitch, ending his seven-year relationship with Wanda Gag. He and Mura were married in 1926. It was also in Vienna that he produced his first notable artistic work.
Influenced by European artists such as Jules Pascin and Georg Grosz, Dehn began producing drawings of people in cafes, streets, and parks, which while mostly executed in his studio, were based on spontaneous life studies and have an expressive, sometimes almost childishly wandering quality of line. The mixture of sophistication and naiveté in these drawings was new to American audiences, as was the raciness of their subject matter, which often featured pleasure-seekers, prostitutes or scenes of sexual dalliance, presented with a strong element of caricature. Some of these drawings contain an element of social criticism, reminiscent of that found in the work of George Grosz, although Dehn’s work tended to focus on humorous commentary rather than savagely attacking his subjects or making a partisan political statement. Many Americans, including some who had originally been supporters of Dehn such as Boardman Robinson, were shocked by these European drawings, although George Grocz (who became a friend of the artist in this period) admired them, and recognized that Dehn could also bring a new vision to America subject matter. As he told Dehn: “You will do things in America which haven’t been done, which need to be done, which only you can do—as far at least as I know America.”
A key factor in Dehn’s artistic evolution at this time was his association with Scofield Thayer...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Oil Crayon
Construction
Located in Raleigh, NC
RGRFinearts is pleased to offer this WPA Era drawing by Carl Pickhardt of construction workers.
It is matted and drawn on slightly pinkish paper.
A wonderful addition to a WPA or lab...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Pencil
At the Beach
Located in Raleigh, NC
RGRFineArts is pleased to offer this fine pencil drawing of young people enjoing the beach by Carl Pickhardt done in the 1930s.
This picture illustrates the fine craftsmanship that P...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Pencil
God Bless Our Home, Social Realist Scene, Figurative Americana Interior Scene
Located in Doylestown, PA
"God Bless Our Home" is an interior and figurative scene of a woman sitting on her couch in serious and proper expression. The Americana style painting was created by American genre ...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Alibi Ike
Located in Raleigh, NC
RGRFINEARTS is pleased to offer this baseball themed lithograph of Alibi Ike after the character in the 1935 movie.
A fine example of the draftsmanship that Pickhardt was known for.
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Lithograph
Down for the Count
Located in Raleigh, NC
RGRFINEARTS is pleased to offer this rare boxing themed screen print bt Carl Pickhardt.
On green paper.
Signed and numbered at lower right within the image as as customary with scree...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Screen
Circus Acrobats - ( Friends with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo )
Located in Miami, FL
As they take center stage, four acrobats are depicted, forming an architectural structure composed of contorted human bodies. The small gallery of onlookers displays a variety of ex...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Photographer
Located in Raleigh, NC
RGRFineArts is pleased to offer this WPA Era lithograph by Carl Pickhardt.
Sight dimensions are 18 x 11.5 in and the image measures 11.5 x 9 in.
Signed and titled in pencil.
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Lithograph
Sun Bathers
Located in Raleigh, NC
RGRFINEARTS is pleased to offer this fine lithograph of a couple on the beach appropriately titled Sun Bathers" from and editoon of 30 prints.
Signed and numbered below the image.
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Lithograph
Waterfront
Located in Raleigh, NC
Excellent condition and matted with archival materials.
An excellent addition to any New York or WPA collection.
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Lithograph
Bronx Post Office Mural Study WPA Horse Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern
By Jo Cain
Located in New York, NY
Bronx Post Office Mural Study WPA Horse Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern
Jo Cain (1904 - 2003)
Couriers of History Bronx Post Office Mural Study
Horse in the Sun (with two ad...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Ink, Gouache, Board
Mother and Child with Goldfish
By Peggy Dodds
Located in Los Angeles, CA
A whimsical pastel featuring a Mother with her Child on her lap that just pulled a goldfish from it's bowl.
A charming large work that is exquisitely framed.
Peggy Dodds Williams
...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Pastel
Sunday Morning
Located in Wilton Manors, FL
Sunday Morning. Title: Sunday Morning
Artist: Dox Thrash (American, Griffin, Georgia 1893–1965 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
Printer: Sam J. Brown (1901-1994).
Date: ca. 1939.
Medium: Drypoint
Dimensions: sheet: 12 5/8 x 10 5/8 in. (32 x 27 cm)
plate: 8 7/8 x 7 7/8 in. (22.5 x 20 cm)
This is the most heavily inked, atmospheric example known to exist. Unique, unsigned example from the collection of artist Samuel J. Brown.
Dox Thrash (1893–1965) was an African-American artist who was famed as a skilled draftsman, master printmaker, and painter and as the co-inventor of the Carborundum printmaking process.[1] The subject of his artwork was African American life. He served as a printmaker with the W.P.A. at the Fine Print Workshop of Philadelphia. The artist spent much of his career living and working in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[1]
Early life
Dox Thrash was born on March 22, 1893, in Griffin, Georgia.[2] He was the second of four children in his family. Thrash left home at the age of fifteen in search of work up north. He was part of the Great Migration (African American) looking for industrial work in the North.
The first job that Thrash got was working with a circus and a Vaudeville act. In 1911, at the age of 18, he moved to Chicago, Illinois.[3] He got a job as an elevator operator during the day, and used this source of income to attend school.[3] In 1914 he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.[1]
In 1917, the United States declared war on Germany and entered World War I. In September 1917, at the age of twenty-four, Thrash enlisted in the army.[3] He was placed in the 365th Infantry Regiment, 183rd Brigade, 92nd Division, also known as the Buffalo Soldiers.[1] During combat, Thrash suffered shell shock and a gas attack, but was not permanently injured.
Career as an artist
Front cover of Dox Thrash: An African American Master Printmaker Rediscovered, by John Ittmann.
After having served in the war, Thrash qualified as a war veteran and enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago with the support of federal funding.[3] After finishing his education, he traveled intermittently from Georgia to Chicago, Boston, New York, and finally Philadelphia, working odd jobs - experiences that provided him with subject matter to later paint. Settling in Philadelphia by 1925, he took a job working as a janitor. In his free time, he continued his art career and used his talent to create emblems, such as the one for the North Philadelphia Businessmen's Association, and posters in exhibitions and festivals, including the 2nd Annual National Negro Music Festival and the Tra Club of Philadelphia.[1] This gained him local recognition and opened doors for new artistic endeavors. By 1929, Thrash was attending nightly classes within these clubs, namely with Earl Horter of the Graphic Sketch Club, now known as the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial.[3]
In 1937 Thrash joined the government-sponsored Works Progress Administration (WPA)'s Federal Art Project.[4] Through the WPA, Thrash began working at the Fine Print Workshop of Philadelphia.[5] At the Fine Print Workshop of Philadelphia, Thrash, along with Michael J. Gallagher and Hugh Mesibov, began experimenting and co-inventing the process of carborundum mezzotint, a printmaking technique.[1] Carborundum printmaking uses a carbon-based abrasive to burnish copper plates creating an image that can produce a print in tones ranging from pale gray to deep black. The method is similar to the more difficult and complicated mezzotint process developed in the 17th century. He used this as his primary medium for much of his career and created his greatest works with it. One of his first pieces employing this nascent technique was his anonymous self-portrait entitled Mr. X.
With this new technique, the three gained increasing recognition as they published more and more graphics within newspapers and featured more and more pieces within exhibitions. Their works often featured subtle commentaries about social and economic exploitation regarding the contemporary politics of the Great Depression and the Second World War. By 1940, Thrash, Gallagher, and Mesibov all began to gain attention in local circles for their carborundum prints, although the role that each artist played in the development of the process was left unclear.[6]
In 1960, Thrash participated in a show at the Pyramid Club, a social organization of Black professional men that held an annual art exhibit starting in 1941. Others on hand were Howard N. Watson, Benjamin Britt, Robert Jefferson and Samuel J. Brown Jr.
Thrash spent the later years of his life mentoring young African American artists. He died on April 19, 1965, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[2] He was posthumously honored almost 40 years later in 2001 with a major retrospective, titled Dox Thrash: An African-American Master Printmaker Rediscovered, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[7]
Thrash's work was included in the 2015 exhibition We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s at the Woodmere Art Museum.[8]
Relation to Alain Locke and the New Negro Movement
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Alain LeRoy Locke (1885-1954) was an intellectual, professor and author who espoused that African Americans, specifically artists, to capture the personality, lives, and essence of their people in The New Negro. He explained “The Negro physiognomy must be freshly and objectively conceived on its own patterns if it is ever to be seriously and importantly interpreted. Art must discover and reveal the beauty which prejudice and caricature have overlaid.”[9] What Locke is expressing here is not only the call for black artists to overcome racial prejudices via positive artistic representations of blacks, but that the actual African American individual like Thrash portrayed the lives of fellow blacks, and had the power to propagate this idea of the New Negro, as Locke explains, “There is the possibility that the sensitive artistic mind of the American Negro, stimulated by a cultural pride and interest, will receive…a profound and galvanizing influence.”[10]
In his shadowy carborundum mezzotint Cabin Days, Thrash depicts a southern black family on the porch of their shack-like home in a rural landscape. The man, woman, and child, clutched tenderly to the female figure's breast, create an intimate scene highlighted by the bright cleanliness of the laundry hanging behind them. Placed in front of the drying laundry, they are framed by one aspect of the hard work accomplished during the day. Close to one another, staring collectively outward at the Southern landscape, they, and their laudable priorities of cleanliness and family, are made the bright focal point in the poor, unstable atmosphere. Such inner warmth is seemingly incompatible with the family's crooked and disheveled surroundings, and their fuzzy appearance with a lack of facial detail makes the scene into a general archetype for rural southern blacks living conditions and qualities. Thrash was referencing an experience common to thousands of black families in rural occupations at the turn of the 20th century, often forced into slavery-like tenant farming as their only means of livelihood in the racist South. The “uneven clapboards, leaning porch, broken shutter, and uprooted fence” are rife with instability, much like the post-slavery economic and social systems of the South, making it clear that for African Americans, “the house is not the home; rather, the figures on the porch represent family unity and continuity”.[10] In this way, Thrash is able to not only champion the positive qualities of blacks in the family setting but underscore this with a symbolic look at their disadvantaged situation, making it all the more impressive that they persevere. Thrash symbolically depicted harsh realities for the African American at this transitional point in history while conferring a sensitive rendering of their humanity, akin to any other race, despite its utter denial by American society.
Through softer tempera washes like A New Day, he literally and figuratively paints a picture of a black family transitioning from the South to the North during the Great Migration, making a hopeful, daring leap to attempt to be equal members of the society that has historically oppressed them. On the left side of the canvas lie muddled farm houses and plow handles, embodiments of their rural life of tedious hard labor behind them, fading to gray. Their hopeful gazes “…convey the optimism of the scores of African Americans who left the countryside to pursue better job opportunities, health care, and education in urban centers”.[6] The stance of the figures, with their chins raised in a dignified gesture towards cityscape ahead suggest a confidence and ambitiousness in their collective futures in this new northern industrial terrain. Even the child, clutched securely in the arm of the mother figure against her breast is not only serenely grinning, but calm enough to appear to gently doze, confident in that the journey ahead will result positively, poses no threat. The exposed arm of the woman is notable as well, being unusually thick and muscular, along with the general proportions of the kneeling father, who position on the ground appears not pleading but rather in a slightly exhausted, but upright gratefulness for the promise ahead. Thrash makes it clear that this family has traveled a long way, but is not depleted; rather they are strong and preparing for further hard work and hopeful success ahead. They are the quintessence of the New Negro, in that they are not only journeying forward to seize previously unobtainable opportunities that will enhance their lives, but the manner with which they hold themselves provokes a certain level of warranted respect for their humanity, from the viewer.
In fact it was the strength of his fellow African Americans that Thrash often emphasized, amongst other positive characteristics in the face of adversity in personal portraits. Through his carborundum print Life, he depicts a neatly dressed black girl reading...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Etching
Kansas Farmyard / Missouri Farmyard
Located in Santa Monica, CA
THOMAS HART BENTON (1889-1975)
MISSOURI FARMYARD, 1936 (Fath 10) AKA KANSAS FARMYARD
Lithograph as published by Associated American Artists. Edition 250. Signed in pencil and in the...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Lithograph
Untitled (Joe Louis knocking out Max Schmeling in 1938 rematch)
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled
(Joe Louis knocking out Max Schmeling in 1938 rematch)
Pen and ink with wash on heavy wove sketchbook paper, 1938
Signed lower right: Fletcher Martin
Directly related to Martin's famous painting of 1942 entitled "Lullaby", which was also used in the lithograph of the same name. (see photo)
The drawing depicts the third and final knockdown of Max Schmeling in their rematch of 1938.
Condition: Mat staining at the edges of the sketchbook page edges
Toning to verso from previous framing.
Does not affect framed presentation
"It was here that Louis first used sport to bridge America's cavernous racial divide. With Hitler on the march in Europe and using Schmeling's victory over Louis as proof of “Aryan supremacy,” anti-Nazi sentiment ran high in the States. Louis had long grown accustomed to the pressures of representing his race but here the burdens were broader and deeper. Now he was shouldering the hopes of an entire nation.
A few weeks before the match Louis visited the White House and U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose tenure lasted even longer than Louis' would, told him, “Joe, we need muscles like yours to beat Germany.”
Those muscles certainly beat Schmeling on fight night...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Ink
Gnarled Tree - African American Artist
Located in Miami, FL
Executed in 1930, this abstract yet representational biomorphic charcoal work by African American Artist Charles Henry Alston prefigures his ...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Paper, Charcoal
The Chapel, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
By Louis Orr
Located in Raleigh, NC
RGRFineArts is pleased to offer the etching The Duke Chapel from the Centennial Edition of 100 prints.
Excellent condition and nicely framed with Tru Vue ultraviolet filtering glass.
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Etching
WPA Mid 20th Century Modern Social Realism American Scene Men Working Industrial
By Jo Cain
Located in New York, NY
WPA Mid 20th Century Modern Social Realism American Scene Men Working Industrial
Jo Cain (1904 - 2003)
Bailing Hay
42 x 40 inches
Oil on paper c. 1930s
Signed lower right
Unframed
Our gallery is pleased to present the exhibition, "Jo Cain: Echoes of an Era," a tribute to the enduring legacy of Joseph Lambert Cain and a celebration of his art that transcends time and remains relevant today. The exhibition features mural studies, works on paper and paintings from the 1930s and 40s, all are available on 1stDibs.
BIO
JOSEPH LAMBERT CAIN (1904–2003)
A painter, muralist, and art educator, Joseph Cain...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Paper, Oil
'Spiderboy' — 1930s American Realism, New York City
By James Allen
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
James Allen, 'Spiderboy', 1937, etching, edition 40, Ryan 86. Signed in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, on cream laid paper, with full margins (1 1/4 to 2 7/8 inches). A s...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Etching
'The Connectors' — 1930s American Realism, New York City
By James Allen
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
James Allen, 'The Connectors', 1934, etching, edition not stated, Ryan 66. Signed in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, on handmade, cream laid paper, with margins (1/2 to 1...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Etching
Man Working Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Industrial WPA Modern
By Jo Cain
Located in New York, NY
Man Working Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Industrial WPA Modern
Jo Cain (1904 - 2003)
Telephone Pole Worker
38 1/4 x 18 1/2 inches
Oil on pap...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Paper, Gouache
Cowboys Horses Cattle WPA American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern
By Jo Cain
Located in New York, NY
Cowboys Horses Cattle WPA American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern
Jo Cain (1904 – 2003)
Cowboy
33 3/4 x 36 inches
Oil on paper, c. 1930s
Signed...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Paper, Oil
Industrial Working Man WPA Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern American Scene
By Jo Cain
Located in New York, NY
Industrial Working Man WPA Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern American Scene
Jo Cain (1904 - 2003)
Man with a Tool
39 ¾ x 38 ¼ inches
Gouache...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Paper, Gouache
Working Man WPA Social Realism Industrial Modernism 20th Century American Scene
By Jo Cain
Located in New York, NY
Working Man WPA Social Realism Industrial Modernism 20th Century American Scene
Jo Cain (1904 - 2003)
Printing Press
40 ½ x 26 inches (sight)
Oil o...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Oil, Paper
Surveyors WPA American Scene Mid 20th Century Modern Social Realism Men Working
By Jo Cain
Located in New York, NY
Surveyors WPA American Scene Mid 20th Century Modern Social Realism Men Working
Jo Cain (1904 - 2003)
Surveyors
30 ½ x 40 ¼ inches (sight)
Gouache on paper c. 1930s
Signed lower rig...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Gouache, Paper
Greenwich Village NYC WPA Mid 20th Century American Scene Ashcan Modern Realism
Located in New York, NY
Greenwich Village NYC WPA Mid 20th Century American Scene Ashcan Modern Realism
Alfred Mira (1900-1981)
Greenwich Village NYC
14 x 17 inches
Oil on board,...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Oil, Board
Railroad Worker Industrial WPA American Scene Mid Century Modern Social Realism
By Jo Cain
Located in New York, NY
Railroad Worker Industrial WPA American Scene Mid Century Modern Social Realism
Jo Cain (1904 - 2003)
Railroad worker
36 ¼ x 27 inches
Oil on paper c. 1930s
S...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Paper, Oil
Industry and Commerce
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This mural study is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s
Industry and Commerce, 1936, tempera on panel, 16 ½ x 39 ½ inches, signed verso “John Ballat...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Tempera
"Painter" 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Working Man Modern WPA Era
By Jo Cain
Located in New York, NY
"Painter" 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Working Man Modern WPA Era
Jo Cain (1904 - 2003)
Painter
41 ½ x 36 3/4 inches (sight)
Gouache on paper c. 1930s
Signed lower rig...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Paper, Gouache
Chemists American Scene Mid 20th Century Modern Social Realism WPA Science Mural
By Jo Cain
Located in New York, NY
Chemists American Scene Mid 20th Century Modern Social Realism WPA Science Mural
Jo Cain (1904 - 2003)
Chemists
40 ½ x 31 ¾ inches
Oil on paper, c. 1930s
Signed lower right
49 x 40 ...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Paper, Gouache
St, Louis River Mural Study American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century WPA
By Jo Cain
Located in New York, NY
St, Louis River Mural Study American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century WPA
Jo Cain (1904-2003)
The Drama of the St. Louis Great River
23 1/4 x 25 ½ inches
Gouache on board c. 19...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Gouache, Board
"Good Health Week" American Scene Modern Social Realism Mid 20th Century WPA Era
By Jo Cain
Located in New York, NY
"Good Health Week" American Scene Modern Social Realism Mid- 20th Century WPA Era
Jo Cain (1904 – 2003)
Good Health Week – b/w
10 ½ x 15 1/2 inches
I...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Paper, Ink
Industrial Man Working Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Modern WPA
By Jo Cain
Located in New York, NY
Industrial Man Working Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Modern WPA
Jo Cain (1904 - 2003)
Hammering Nails
39 x 50 ½ inches
Gouache on paper c. 19...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Gouache, Paper
Long Beach WPA Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Modernism Ashcan
Located in New York, NY
Long Beach WPA Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Modernism Ashcan
Daniel Ralph Celantano (1902-1980)
"Long Beach"
8 x 10 inches
Oil on artist board
Signed lower left:...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Oil, Board
On the Balcony - American Scene Female Artist
By Louise Lue Osborne
Located in Miami, FL
Female artist Louise Lue Osborne paints a classic composition with an interaction of two women and a child soaked in golden late light. The figural gro...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Synthetic Resin, Fiberboard
Studio Interior Mid 20th Century American Scene Modern WPA Still Life Realism
Located in New York, NY
Studio Interior Scene Mid 20th Century American Modern WPA Still Life Realism
The painting measures 10 x 12 inches. Framed, the work is 13 1/4 x 15 1/...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Oil, Board
Factory Worker
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s
Factory Worker, c. 1936, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 18 ¼ x 36 inches; exhibited in City ...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Oil
Street Scene WPA American Scene Mid-20th Century Modern Coin Tower California SF
Located in New York, NY
Street Scene WPA American Scene Mid-20th Century Modern Coin Tower California SF
Victor Arnautofff (1896 – 1979)
City Street
12 x 14 inches
Oil on board, c. 1930s
Signed lower left
BIO
Born in the Ukraine of Russia, Victor Arnautoff became one of the most influential muralists in San Francisco in the 1930s and worked for the Federal Arts Project, WPA, in the expressive, social protest...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Oil, Board
"Unemployed" WPA American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern
Located in New York, NY
"Unemployed" WPA American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern
William Gropper (1898 - 1977)
Unemployed
20 x 16 inches
Oil on canvas, 1937
Signed lower right
Provenance: E...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
NYC EL American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern WPA Era Figurative
Located in New York, NY
NYC EL American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern WPA Era Figurative
Cecil Bell (1906 – 1970)
Street Life Under the EL
22 x 30 inches
Oil on canvas, c. 1930s
Signed upper...
Category
1930s American Realist Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
American Realist art for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic American Realist art available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add art created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, purple, orange, yellow and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Slim Aarons, Willard Dixon, Nicholas Evans-Cato, and Mitchell Funk. Frequently made by artists working with Paint, and Oil Paint and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large American Realist art, so small editions measuring 0.99 inches across are also available. Prices for art made by famous or emerging artists can differ depending on medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $51 and tops out at $2,750,000, while the average work sells for $2,800.
Recently Viewed
View AllMore Ways To Browse
Wall Fresco
19th Century Spanish Paintings
Greek Woman
Oil Painting Man 19th
Native American Gold
Cut Paper Wall Art
Antique Painting Auction
Antique Painting Auctions
Japanese Painting Gold Leaf
Gold Leaf Painting Japan
Lady Just
Sea Life Gold
Canvas Midcentury Print
Costa Vintage
Russian Vintage Fashion
Coat Mans
Head Of Man Sculpture
Sculpture 1942