Stuyvesant Van Veen Art

Medium: original lithograph. This lithograph is from the rare 1953 "Improvisations" portfolio, published by the Artists Equity Association of New York on the occasion of the 1953 Spr...

Medium: original lithograph. This lithograph is from the rare 1951 "Improvisations" portfolio, published by the Artists Equity Association of New York on the occasion of the 1951 Spr...

Medium: original lithograph. This lithograph is from the rare 1951 "Improvisations" portfolio, published by the Artists Equity Association of New York on the occasion of the 1951 Spr...

Medium: original lithograph. This lithograph is from the rare 1952 "Improvisations" portfolio, published by the Artists Equity Association of New York on the occasion of the 1952 Spr...

'Chatham Square'; watercolor, color pencil, India ink, and scratchwork; 1955. Signed and annotated '© 1955' in ink, lower left. Titled 'Chatham Square' in pencil, verso. An atmospheric, mixed-media, aerial cityscape of mid-century Manhattan, with fresh colors, on heavy watercolor paper; the full sheet with the image extending to the sheet edges, in good condition. Chatham Square is a historic intersection in Manhattan's Chinatown, New York City. The square lies at the confluence of eight streets: the Bowery, Doyers Street, East Broadway, St. James Place, Mott Street, Oliver Street, Worth Street, and Park Row. The small park in the center of the square is known as both Kimlau Square and Lin Ze Xu Square. Painter, muralist, and teacher, Stuyvesant (Stuart) Van Veen was born in New York City in 1910. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts under Daniel Garber, the National Academy of Design under David Karfunkel, the Art Students League under Thomas Hart Benton, and at the New York School of Industrial Art and Columbia University. Prolific and notably active in the art world throughout his career, Van Veen was a member of the American Watercolor Society, the National Society for Painters Casein, the National Society of Mural Painters, the Artists’ Equity Association, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the American Artists Congress, the Artists League of America and the Mural Artists Guild. His numerous exhibitions include: the Carnegie Institute, 1929, 1943; the Art Institute of Chicago, 1930-1946; the Society of Independent Artists, 1930; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Annual, 1930, 1933-34, 1938; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Annual, 1940, 1941, 1943; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1929, 1936; Brooklyn Museum, 1929, 1936; St. Louis Art Museum, 1929, 1936, 1939, 1943; Minnesota Institute of Art, 1929, 1936, 1939; Whitney Museum of American Art, 1935-40; Museum of Modern Art, 1934, 1937, 1939; Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1935-36, 1939, 1941; Cincinnati Art Museum, 1936-49; Syracuse Museum of Fine Art, 1939; National Gallery of Art, 1942, 1944; National Academy of Design 1965-69; American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1961 (Childe Hassam purchase award); American Society of Contemporary Artists, 1966 (Nelson Whitehead Prize); and the “New York City WPA” at Parsons School of Design, 1977. Van Veen created more than 30 murals in public buildings, many commissioned by the WPA, including paintings for Riverside Memorial Chapel, New York; Fordham Hospital, New York; the Labor Building, Washington, DC; the United States Post Office, Pittsburgh, 1937; the New York World’s Fair, 1938; and the Wright-Paterson Air Force Base, 1945. One of his best-known works is a series of seven murals in celebration of the Brooklyn Dodgers, a series that still exists in the lobbies of the Ebbets Field...