"Five Olympic Rowers", Monumental Art Deco 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...

Continuing a tradition going back decades, Josef Pieper painted a series of seaside scenes with multiple nude male figures, riding and leading horses along the shore, their strong bodies...

Strikingly and vividly painted in watery tones of blue, green, tan and rose, this watercolor painting by Jean Paul Slusser depicts three nude male bathers...

Beautifully and sensitively painted, this view of a young, nude male model, facing away from the viewer, places him in an artist's studio or atelier, with painters and their easels v...

Selection of 1930's Academic Study Drawings of Male Nudes, hand drawn by Carl De Zeeuw, American, circa 1930's. The price noted below is for EACH dra...

Oil painting on canvas 1930 signed Thioll of two young naked women frolicking at the water's edge and the third was wearing a jersey.

Oil painting by an artist from the 1930s-1950s. Nude scene of a woman. Oil on wooden panel. Unsigned. The painting technique is strongly reminiscent of the famous German painters of ...

For your consideration is a vivid, framed oil painting on canvas, depicting nude men on rocks by the sea, hand-signed by August Torsleff. In excellent ...