"Five Olympic Rowers", Monumental 1930s Painting of Nude Male Oarsmen

An extraordinary example of Art Deco painting with allegorical meaning -- like so many murals painted in the 1920s and 1930s -- this large work by William L'Engle depicts five nude male figures laboring in the field, symbolizing life in Provincetown, Massachusetts. A Black male figure in the foreground is planting crops, while two other figures in the distance are pulling a rope, perhaps alluding to fishing boats tied up at the dock, while another nude seems to be sinking into sleep beneath a pier -- all with the waters of the Atlantic Ocean in the background. L'Engle called this "The Five Josephs," perhaps referring to Joseph of Arimathea and other figures in the New Testament. William L'Engle was a towering figure in the Provincetown art colony, and was extremely well connected with America's artistic elite, starting with his trip to Europe as a young man with Waldo Pierce and George Biddle. Over time, William and his life Lucy became close to a wide range of important figures in painting, theater and the arts, including Charles Hawthorne, Eugene O'Neill, Gerrit Beneker, John Dos Passos, Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy, William and Marguerite Zorach, Edna St. Vincent-Millay, Charles Demuth, Childe Hassam, George Biddle, Edwin Dickinson...

Painted in an era when African or African American figures were increasingly featured in painting and sculpture, both in America and Europe, this sensuous depiction of a black male figure by Rowena Meeks Abdy...

Wilhelm Christens - female nude 64cm x 42cm (frame excluded) - oil on canvas applied to rigid cardboard 1920s Christens, Wilhelm (1878 Düsseldorf - 1964) He attended the Karl...

Contour style painting on paper of large male nude seated figure, artist signed at bottom Fred Bennett. In simple white enameled metal and glass frame with mat. Beautifully executed ...