Duane Bryers Art

Thomas Hart Benton, 'Goin' Home', lithograph, 1937, edition 250, Fath 14. Signed in pencil. Signed in the stone, lower right. A fine, richly-inked impression, on off-white, wove paper, with margins, in excellent condition. Published by Associated American Artists. Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 9 7/16 x 11 7/8 inches; sheet size 10 3/4 x 13 5/16 inches. Impressions of this work are held in the following museum collections: Figge Art Museum, Georgetown University Art Collection, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Library of Congress, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. ABOUT THE ARTIST “Benton’s idiom was essentially political and rhetorical, the painterly equivalent of the country stump speeches that were a Benton family tradition. The artist vividly recalled accompanying his father, Maecenas E. Benton — a four-term U.S. congressman, on campaigns through rural Missouri. Young Tom Benton grew up with an instinct for constituencies that led him to assess art on the basis of its audience appeal. His own art, after the experiments with abstraction, was high-spirited entertainment designed to catch and hold an audience with a political message neatly bracketed between humor and local color.” —Elizabeth Broun “Thomas Hart Benton: A Politician in Art,” Smithsonian Studies in American Art, Spring 1987. Born in 1889 in Neosho, Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton spent much of his childhood and adolescence in Washington, D.C., where his father, Maecenas Eason Benton, served as a Democratic member of Congress from 1897 to 1905. Hoping to prepare Benton for a political career, his father sent him to Western Military Academy. After nearly two years at the academy, Benton persuaded his mother to support him in attending the Art Institute of Chicago for two years, followed by two additional years at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1912, Benton returned to America and moved to New York to pursue his artistic career. One of his first jobs involved painting sets for silent films, which were being produced in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Benton credits this experience with equipping him with the skills necessary to create his large-scale murals. When World War I broke out, Benton joined the Navy. Stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, he was assigned to create drawings of camouflaged ships arriving at Norfolk Naval Station. These renderings were used to identify vessels that might be lost in battle. Benton later remarked that being a "camofleur" profoundly impacted his career: "When I came out of the Navy after the First World War," he said, "I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to be just a studio painter, a pattern maker in the fashion then dominating the art world—as it still does. I began to think of returning to the painting of subjects, subjects with meanings, which people, in general, might be interested in." While developing his Regionalist vision, Benton also taught art, first at a city-supported school and later at The Art Students League from 1926 to 1935. One of his students was a young Jackson Pollock, who regarded Benton as both a mentor and father figure. In 1930, Benton was commissioned to paint a mural for the New School for Social Research. The "America Today" mural, now permanently exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, led to many more commissions as Benton’s work gained wide recognition. The Regionalist Movement became popular during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Painters such as Benton, Grant Wood, and John Steuart Curry rejected modernist European influences, choosing instead to depict realistic images of small-town and rural life—comforting representations of the American heartland during a period of upheaval. Time Magazine referred to Benton as "the most virile of U.S. painters of the U.S. Scene," featuring his self-portrait on the cover of a 1934 issue that included a story titled "The Birth of Regionalism." In 1935, Benton left New York and returned to Missouri, where he taught at the Kansas City Art Institute. His outspoken criticism of modern art, art critics, and political views alienated him from many influential figures in both political and art circles. Nonetheless, Benton remained true to his beliefs, continuing to create murals, paintings, and prints that captured enduring images of American life. The dramatic and engaging characteristics of Benton’s artwork drawn the attention of Hollywood producers, leading him to create illustrations and posters for films, including his famous lithographs for the film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s "The Grapes of Wrath," produced by Twentieth Century Fox. During the 1930s, The Limited Editions Club of New York asked Benton to illustrate special editions of three of Mark Twain’s books...

Artist: Will Barnet, American (1911 - 2012) Title: Meditation and Minou Year: 1980 Medium: Lithograph and Serigraph on BFK Rives, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 40/150

Original poster: Rembember Your First Thrill of Ameridan Liberty YOUR DUTY Buy United States Government Bonds 2nd Liberty Loan of 1917. Linen backed and ready to frame. Poste...

"Erycinids" is an original color lithograph by Louis Prang. It depicts colorful butterflies around a variety of flowers. 5" x 8" art 16 1/2" x 19" framed Louis Prang was an American printer, lithographer, and publisher. He is sometimes known as the father of the American Christmas card. He created L. Prang and Company in 1860 and became successful and known for their Civil War maps...

This artwork titled "The Horsemen" 1935, is an original lithograph on paper by noted American artist William Gropper, 1897-1977. It is hand signed in pencil by the artist. The artwork (image) size is 9.5 x 12.75 inches, framed size is 17.5 x 20.40 inches. Published by Associated American Artists, New York, printed by George Miller. Referenced and pictured in the artist catalogue raisonne by Steinberg, page 246 and Windisch and Cole, plate #602. Custom framed in a black metal frame, with off white matting. It is in excellent condition, the frame have very minor scratches. An example of this particular artwork is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. and at the Portland Museum, Portland. About the artist: William Gropper was born in New York City's Lower East Side in 1897. He was the first of six children to parents who earned small wages working in sweatshops. At the age of fourteen, Gropper left school to help support his family. While carrying bolts of cloth for his deliveries, Gropper began to draw on scraps of paper, sidewalks, and walls. A passerby saw some of these drawings and invited Gropper to attend a life-drawing class at the Ferrer School. He studied there for three years from 1912 to 1915, attending classes taught by Robert Henri and George Bellows. From 1915 to 1918 Gropper attended the New York School of Fine and Applied Art part-time on scholarship. Gropper also won a scholarship to the National Academy of Design, but remained as a student for only a short time; the rigid and systematic institution conflicted with Gropper's belief in the personal nature of art. At the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, Gropper earned several prizes. One of these prizes was for his cartoons, which led him to be hired by the New York Tribune in 1917 to sketch for their features. A few years later through freelance work, his cartoons and drawings appeared in other newspapers and magazines, such as The Liberator, The New Masses, The New York Post, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. By the late 1920s Gropper was an established cartoonist and draughtsman. He sympathized with the labor movement and was a champion of peace and personal liberty. Gropper began to paint seriously, but privately, on these themes in 1921. Gropper's first exhibition of monotypes was held in 1921 at the Washington Square Book Shop in New York. At this time, he also began to do illustrations for books. Gropper took his first sketching trip in 1924 to the West with Morris Pass. By 1930 Gropper began to receive recognition as a fine artist. In 1934, he received two mural commissions from the Schenley Corporation in New York City. In 1935, he was commissioned to paint a mural for the Hotel Taft in New York City. In 1936, Gropper received several public mural commissions: one was for the Freeport, Long Island Post Office, which was completed in 1938 and followed by another mural for the Northwestern Postal Station, Detroit, Michigan. In his first gallery exhibition in 1936 at ACA Galleries, Gropper's work was so well received by critics, collectors, and artists that the following year he had two one-man exhibitions at ACA Galleries. In 1937, Gropper traveled west on a Guggenheim Fellowship and visited the Dust Bowl and the Hoover and Grand Coulee Dams, sketching studies for a series of paintings and a mural he painted for the Department of the Interior in Washington, DC. That same year he had paintings purchased by both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. Gropper exhibited at the 1939 New York World's Fair, Whitney Museum of American Art (1924-55), Art Institute of Chicago (1935-49), Carnegie International (1937-50), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1939-48), and National Academy of Design (1945-48). He was a founder of the Artists Equity Association and member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. From 1940 to 1945 William Gropper was preoccupied with anti-Nazi cartoons...

Early Speed Lithograph, 1953 Signed lower right Edition 250 Published by Associated American Artists Illustrated: AAA catalog 1953-03 Reference: AAA Index 1187 Condition: The sheet i...

This artwork titled "Soaking Up" c.1970 is an original lithograph on Wove paper by noted western artist Tom (Thomas) Ryan, 1922-2011. It is hand signed, titled and numbered 68/100 in pencil by the artist. The artwork (image) size is 12.25 x 17.35 inches, sheet size is 17.5 x 21.65 inches. It is in excellent condition About the artist: Tom Ryan was born Jan. 12, 1922, in Springfield, Ill., to William Martin Ryan — whose family immigrated to Illinois from Ireland in the 1880s — and Sarah Helen Behrens, whose ancestry predates the Revolutionary War. They had nine children — six boys and three girls. He began drawing before he went to school. "I was 4 years old and drawing airplanes, and an older brother was helping me," Ryan told the Reporter-Telegram in a 2002 interview at the Haley Library's going away party held in his honor. "Those were my first art lessons." He did not decide to be an artist until after his service in World War II. While in the U.S. Navy during the war, he "made quite a bit of money" drawing portraits of his shipmates and other servicemen. After being discharged in 1945, he picked up a Life magazine that carried an article about N.C. Wyeth. "I read the article, and I liked what I read, and I loved the pictures reproduced from his paintings in the article," Ryan said in 2002. "I decided then and there to be an artist." Following his graduation from the American Academy of Art, an education made possible through the GI Bill, he returned to Springfield where he married Jacqueline "Jacquie" Harvey, daughter of a local doctor. She died in 1998. The Ryans moved to New York City where he continued his studies at the Art Students League. During his second year at the Art Students League, he won a contest. His winning painting became the cover for Western writer Ernest Haycox's novel The Outlaw. "Every month after that I also received an assignment from this publisher, and they would be Western novels," Ryan said in 2002. "So that's what I did for the next six or seven years. Then I started exhibiting at the Latendorf Gallery on Madison Avenue. What I sold mainly were the book covers. They would be published and I would get paid by the publisher, and I'd take them to the gallery, and I'd get paid again." Ryan began making trips west in the late 1950s. He would stay three or four months painting, sketching and photographing scenes he'd need later. At that time, his works centered around historical events and places. "I particularly liked to do some of the trail drive things that I did, like the old longhorns," Ryan said in 2002. In the early 1960s, a work by Norman Rockwell and one by Ryan appeared in the same catalog. Rockwell, who was doing the Boy Scouts calendars for Brown and Bigelow, the premiere calendar publishing company in the United States, told the calendar company about Ryan. "The art director gave me a call and asked if I'd like to do a contemporary cowboy...

SINGLIN' OUT by the American Western artist Conrad Schwiering, is a hand drawn limited edition lithograph printed using hand lithography techniques on archival Somerset paper 100% acid free. SINGLIN' OUT is a realistic Western landscape scene set in Wyoming with a backdrop of Wyoming's majestic purple gray Grand Teton mountains...

Artist: Ernie Barnes Title: Destination Unknown Year: 1979 Print - Lithograph Size: 25" x 19 ½" inches Edition: Pencil signed and numbered 24/300 Unframed ‘Destination Unknow...

Original WW1 poster, linen-backed. Very good condition, rare American WW1 antique military poster. Navy ships need binoculars and spy-glasses. Will you ...

This artwork titled "Springtime in the North" c.1980, published 1996, is a color offset lithograph by renown western artist Arnold Friberg, 1913-2010. I...

Original. YMCA for Your Boy. Acid-free original vintage poster in excellent condition with archival linen backing, ready to frame. Certificate o...