John Atherton Paintings

This meticulously planned, designed, and executed work depicts an ultra-wide angle view of a rock quarry/mine. The viewer looks down at close-up-stylized rock formations and then ou...

Signed lower right: "Atherton", inscribed "John Atherton Original Tempera 7/28/50" on verso. Artwork measures 16" x 20" and framed 20" x 24" x 2 ½" About this artists: John Atherton (1900-1952) did not show an early aptitude for art; rather, his first love was nature and the activities he relished there, mainly fishing and hunting. Born in Brainerd, Minnesota in 1900, he learned to fish with his father from the age of four. Later the family moved to Spokane, Washington, and when he was old enough, Atherton worked at a variety of jobs to help support his family. One such job, in the sorting plant of a lead and silver mine, paid $4.25 a day—a good wage, though he never had time to spend his money, since he worked seven days a week. After serving in the Navy for a year during World War I, Atherton was determined to get an education. He worked as a sign painter and played the banjo in a dance band, finally accumulating enough money to enroll in the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Once there, he worked like a fiend, attending classes both during the day and at night, getting the best training available. Though he had always intended to be a fine artist, Atherton’s first jobs were for commercial art firms. In 1929, using the prize money won for a painting he entered in an art competition, Atherton and his wife moved to New York City. Though the economic situation was difficult in those years, he managed to keep going by taking commissions for magazine illustrations, and over the years he would paint more than forty covers for The Saturday Evening Post. In 1938, an artist friend suggested that he use the same flat, decorative style as his commercial work for his gallery paintings. This was a breakthrough for Atherton; soon afterwards he held a one-man show at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, and his paintings began to be collected by museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Atherton’s reputation increased to a national scale when he designed the art deco stone lithograph poster for the 1939 World’s Fair that strikingly depicted Earth and its atmospheric layers in the lap of Liberty. Atherton was highly influenced by the magic realist...

At the height of Abstraction Expressionism, overlooked Academic Artist John Atherton created a wonderfully complex painting that embodies many of the characteristics of what was going on in Mid-Century American Art. The work is simultaneously abstract as it is representational. Like a Bento Box, it's divided into sections by dividers. On close inspection, each section stands on it's own as a beautiful mini-painting yet coalesces as part of the whole. From a distance, it is eye-pleasing, but as the view gets closer and closer, new structures and details gloriously reveal themselves. This is an important painting and not unlike the work of Joaquín Torres-García. It was done in the last year of the artist's life. Signed lower right. Canvas is relined. Framed size: 30 x 41.25. The work is best viewed with top gallery lights to bring out color. Atherton exhibited at the famous Julien Levy Gallery in New York and his fine art is mainly associated with Magic Realism. He participated in the seminal 1943 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, American Realists and Magic Realists. The Museum of Modern Art has 4 Atherton paintings in its collection. As an Illustrator, Atherton did covers for the Saturday Evening Post, Fortune and Holiday Magazine...

John Atherton 1900-1952 American The Bass Season Saturday Evening Post cover, June 29, 1946 Signed "Atherton" (lower right) Inscribed "The Bass Season opens in the east July 1st /...

Gouache on board, 20 x 24 in. Signed (at lower right): Atherton Painted about 1940 RECORDED: Art News (May 11, 1940), illus. [clipping citation] EXHIBITED: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1940, The International Watercolor Exhibition, no. 156, illus. on cover as Bird in Cage...

Eye-pleasing example of understated and muted colors. Gouache on masonite Ex-collection the Society of Illustrators Meticulously rendered in a post-cubist manner in subtle earth ton...

Complex and masterfully thought out the composition of rifle, gun shells, target shapes, and buck shots. Most likely done for a ad or men's magazine. Signed lower right Atherton. Housed in a rustic House of Heydenryk frame...

At a time when Abstract Expressionism was raging, realist painterJohn Atherton nods his head to the movement with a semi-abstract work. Meticulously rendered and carefully thought o...

Medium: Oil Painting Signature: Signed Lower Left Contact for exact dimensions. Saturday Evening Post Cover, November 22, 1947

An intriguing and complex composition composed of guns, rifles, ammo and a bullseye. Work is housed in a rustic Heydenryk frame.

Woman in Surreal Landscape Illustration Published: Woman's Home Companion December 1939, "How to Pray" By Ralph Sadler Meadowcroft Work is Unframed

In this iconic Saturday Evening Post cover, the artist paints himself as the solitary fisherman underneath a Monroe Street Bridge in Spokane, Washington....