1
10
2
-
https://openvalley.org/files/original/43942685e8b713fee9d80e1bb6de3da0.JPG
2637f038ace460016d92f7d4a3c7921f
https://openvalley.org/files/original/4638c282f59ba88630f3765f8ecaaf31.JPG
6578ce470b7cea2759e26d5c7d131472
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
New Deal Gallery
Description
An account of the resource
This collection of more than 200 paintings owes its existence to two primary causes: allocations from the Federal Art Project to a New York state tuberculosis sanatorium located at Mt. Morris--the landscapes and still lifes were thought to be restful--and to the committed volunteers who helped preserve the paintings after the hospital closed. For several decades the canvases were stored in non-climate-controlled basements; it appears that doctors and staff removed at least three dozen works as "keepsakes." <br /><br />Despite the seeming tranquility of the paintings, they were created by artists primarily from New York City whose background was more political and aesthetically adventurous than this rural location would indicate. <a href="https://openvalley.org/exhibits/show/green-new-deal/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Follow this hyperlink to a short introduction to the New Deal Gallery collection</a>. We're grateful to the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts for access to their collection, which has been re-photographed and appears here at two resolutions: a cropped, web-friendly file size of around 1 MB; and a high-resolution file including the painting's frame.<br /><br />Items in this collection were created according to a consistent format: a short description of each painting in formal terms, followed by a biography of each artist. Where possible we have supplied hyperlinks relevant to their lives and to other examples of their art. In order to better view them using the Omeka program, click on the "View All" option at the bottom of this page to access various sorting options.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1935-1940
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Cooper, Ken (project director)
Ritz, Abigail (photography and project assistant)
Additional research: Justin Anderson, Jessica Apthorpe, Jay Bang, Kristopher Bangsil, Julia Caldwell, Sydney Cannioto, Sabrina Chan, Paige Closser, Victoria Domon, Elana Evenden, Yadelin Fernandez, Michael Griffin, Madison Jackson, Niamh McCrohan, Ben Michalak, Ricky Noel, Elizabeth Ramsay, Skye Rose, Samantha Schmeer, John Serbalik, Marianna Sheedy, Emily Spina, Alison Stern, Ravenna VanOstrand, and Nicholas Vanamee.
Special thanks to: Deborah Bump, Mark Calicchia, Elizabeth Harris, Melissa Moody, Rebecca Lomuto, and Mai Sato.
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Original Format
The type of object, such as photograph, map, drawing, painting, etc., and any additional data
Oil painting
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
23.5 x 29.5 in.
Condition: chipped paint, surface dirt
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Fighting Stallions
Description
An account of the resource
A fierce encounter between two stallions recalls the work of Frederic Remington in its drama and stripped-down setting. Rounded masses of muscle on the horses resemble the surrounding hills, particularly at lower right. Although not perhaps set during nighttime, a stark contrast between white horses and the landscape’s darker colors likewise owes a debt to Remington’s moonlit scenes. Here there are no humans, other horses, or even trees to witness this frozen moment in time.<br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;">About the Artist</span>:
<p>Born in Townsend, MT, Meloy was raised on the family ranch, where he and his siblings were encouraged to pursue their creative interests as children. His parents arranged for a year of study with the landscape painter <a href="http://www.askart.com/artist/Elmer_L_Boone/65200/Elmer_L_Boone.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elmer Boone</a>, and meanwhile Meloy took correspondence courses in commercial art. Visiting friends in Chicago, a trip to that city’s Art Institute so moved him that he decided to enroll there, marking a change in plans and the “divide between a reliable career in commercial art and a more risky career in painting” (citation). Meloy relocated to New York in 1926, studying first with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Henri" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Robert Henri</a> at the National Academic of Design and then <a href="http://www.askart.com/artist_bio/John_Wesley_Carroll/2060/John_Wesley_Carroll.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Carroll</a> at the Art Students’ League. Meloy was influenced by the Ashcan School’s urban realism, sketching on New York’s busy streets and while riding its subway: “These urban portraits convey Meloy’s interest for the whole of life’s volume and mass. The movement of fast-paced New York is depicted through sweeping caricature into beautiful line figures in motion, changing light, and telling environmental information” (citation). During the late 1920s and early ‘30s Meloy supported himself, in part, through illustrations for western and outdoor magazines. Beginning in 1933 he created works for the WPA, including its Easel Art division. During 1941-42 he painted a mural, <a href="https://postalmuseum.si.edu/indiansatthepostoffice/pdfs/The_Flathead_War_Party.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em>Flathead War Party</em></a>, for the US Post Office in Hamilton, MT that still remains. Beginning in 1940 Meloy taught art at Columbia University, where he became intrigued by the more abstract painting of artists like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Matisse" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Henri Matisse</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_de_Kooning" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Willem de Kooning</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jackson Pollock</a>. In a letter concerning his new experiments with color, line, and shape he wrote, “I want to fit in and at the same time I want to be alive and contribute something of myself” (Rodriguez). Meloy died suddenly in 1951, while waiting for a train in Grand Central Station. 2 works at the <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search#!?q=meloy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metropolitan Museum of Art</a>. 2 works at the <a href="https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/artists/3509/objects" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Brooklyn Museum</a>. 3 works at the <a href="http://yellowstoneart.pastperfectonline.com/bycreator?keyword=Meloy%2C+Henry" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Yellowstone Art Museum</a>. 18 works at <a href="http://montanamuseum.pastperfectonline.com/bycreator?keyword=Meloy%2C+Henry" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Montana Museum of Art & Culture</a>. 4 more images at <a href="https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/federal-art-project-photographic-division-collection-5467/series-1/box-16-folder-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FAP</a>. His papers and approximately 4,000 oil paintings are the <a href="https://www.umt.edu/montanamuseum/permanent/henrymeloy.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Montana Museum of Art and Culture</a>.</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Sources Consulted</span>: Gordon McConnell, “Henry Meloy: Record of a Life,” <em>Henry Meloy: Five Themes, 1945-1951</em> (Yellowstone Art Center, 1990); Kathryn Lorraine Rodriguez, <a href="https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2269&context=etd" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em>Henry Meloy: The Portraits, A Narrative of the Exhibition</em></a> (MA Thesis at University of Montana, 2008)</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Meloy, Henry J., 1902-1951
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Federal Art Project
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1935-1940
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ritz, Abigail (photography)
Cooper, Ken (biography)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts
Object #FA18205
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpeg, 908 KB
jpeg, 12.5 MB
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Still image
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
112
Federal Art Project
Henry J. Meloy
New Deal Gallery
painting
-
https://openvalley.org/files/original/3c25bed932cdfae54786629f1bbbd63b.JPG
a085ea719ff2897aab3158398300eb15
https://openvalley.org/files/original/fa341ea6f67266b12da6e7be4f025564.JPG
51db6b43d3aabad013e7b621188b08a8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
New Deal Gallery
Description
An account of the resource
This collection of more than 200 paintings owes its existence to two primary causes: allocations from the Federal Art Project to a New York state tuberculosis sanatorium located at Mt. Morris--the landscapes and still lifes were thought to be restful--and to the committed volunteers who helped preserve the paintings after the hospital closed. For several decades the canvases were stored in non-climate-controlled basements; it appears that doctors and staff removed at least three dozen works as "keepsakes." <br /><br />Despite the seeming tranquility of the paintings, they were created by artists primarily from New York City whose background was more political and aesthetically adventurous than this rural location would indicate. <a href="https://openvalley.org/exhibits/show/green-new-deal/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Follow this hyperlink to a short introduction to the New Deal Gallery collection</a>. We're grateful to the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts for access to their collection, which has been re-photographed and appears here at two resolutions: a cropped, web-friendly file size of around 1 MB; and a high-resolution file including the painting's frame.<br /><br />Items in this collection were created according to a consistent format: a short description of each painting in formal terms, followed by a biography of each artist. Where possible we have supplied hyperlinks relevant to their lives and to other examples of their art. In order to better view them using the Omeka program, click on the "View All" option at the bottom of this page to access various sorting options.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1935-1940
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Cooper, Ken (project director)
Ritz, Abigail (photography and project assistant)
Additional research: Justin Anderson, Jessica Apthorpe, Jay Bang, Kristopher Bangsil, Julia Caldwell, Sydney Cannioto, Sabrina Chan, Paige Closser, Victoria Domon, Elana Evenden, Yadelin Fernandez, Michael Griffin, Madison Jackson, Niamh McCrohan, Ben Michalak, Ricky Noel, Elizabeth Ramsay, Skye Rose, Samantha Schmeer, John Serbalik, Marianna Sheedy, Emily Spina, Alison Stern, Ravenna VanOstrand, and Nicholas Vanamee.
Special thanks to: Deborah Bump, Mark Calicchia, Elizabeth Harris, Melissa Moody, Rebecca Lomuto, and Mai Sato.
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Original Format
The type of object, such as photograph, map, drawing, painting, etc., and any additional data
Watercolor painting
Physical Dimensions
The actual physical size of the original image
16 x 15.5 in.
Condition: good, protected by glass
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Pale girl sits atop a pony, protected from the sun’s rays as apples fall from a tree nearby. The pony, meanwhile, stares blankly at the ground. Although Meloy’s familiarity with animals shows in his representation of anatomy and posture, the bright sun (and perhaps his interest in abstraction) washes away finer details of the scene; the watercolor becomes a composition in red, yellow, white, and brown, with carefully chosen accents of blue.<br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;">About the Artist</span>: Born in Townsend, MT, Meloy was raised on the family ranch, where he and his siblings were encouraged to pursue their creative interests as children. His parents arranged for a year of study with the landscape painter <a href="http://www.askart.com/artist/Elmer_L_Boone/65200/Elmer_L_Boone.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elmer Boone</a>, and meanwhile Meloy took correspondence courses in commercial art. Visiting friends in Chicago, a trip to that city’s Art Institute so moved him that he decided to enroll there, marking a change in plans and the “divide between a reliable career in commercial art and a more risky career in painting” (citation). Meloy relocated to New York in 1926, studying first with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Henri" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Robert Henri</a> at the National Academic of Design and then <a href="http://www.askart.com/artist_bio/John_Wesley_Carroll/2060/John_Wesley_Carroll.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Carroll</a> at the Art Students’ League. Meloy was influenced by the Ashcan School’s urban realism, sketching on New York’s busy streets and while riding its subway: “These urban portraits convey Meloy’s interest for the whole of life’s volume and mass. The movement of fast-paced New York is depicted through sweeping caricature into beautiful line figures in motion, changing light, and telling environmental information” (citation). During the late 1920s and early ‘30s Meloy supported himself, in part, through illustrations for western and outdoor magazines. Beginning in 1933 he created works for the WPA, including its Easel Art division. During 1941-42 he painted a mural, <a href="https://postalmuseum.si.edu/indiansatthepostoffice/pdfs/The_Flathead_War_Party.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em>Flathead War Party</em></a>, for the US Post Office in Hamilton, MT that still remains. Beginning in 1940 Meloy taught art at Columbia University, where he became intrigued by the more abstract painting of artists like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Matisse" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Henri Matisse</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_de_Kooning" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Willem de Kooning</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jackson Pollock</a>. In a letter concerning his new experiments with color, line, and shape he wrote, “I want to fit in and at the same time I want to be alive and contribute something of myself” (Rodriguez). Meloy died suddenly in 1951, while waiting for a train in Grand Central Station. 2 works at the <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search#!?q=meloy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Metropolitan Museum of Art</a>. 2 works at the <a href="https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/artists/3509/objects" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Brooklyn Museum</a>. 3 works at the <a href="http://yellowstoneart.pastperfectonline.com/bycreator?keyword=Meloy%2C+Henry" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Yellowstone Art Museum</a>. 18 works at <a href="http://montanamuseum.pastperfectonline.com/bycreator?keyword=Meloy%2C+Henry" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Montana Museum of Art & Culture</a>. 4 more images at <a href="https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/federal-art-project-photographic-division-collection-5467/series-1/box-16-folder-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FAP</a>. His papers and approximately 4,000 oil paintings are the <a href="https://www.umt.edu/montanamuseum/permanent/henrymeloy.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Montana Museum of Art and Culture</a>.
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Sources Consulted</span>: Gordon McConnell, “Henry Meloy: Record of a Life,” <em>Henry Meloy: Five Themes, 1945-1951</em> (Yellowstone Art Center, 1990); Kathryn Lorraine Rodriguez, <a href="https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2269&context=etd" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em>Henry Meloy: The Portraits, A Narrative of the Exhibition</em></a> (MA Thesis at University of Montana, 2008)</p>
Title
A name given to the resource
Girl and Pony
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Meloy, Henry J., 1902-1951
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Federal Art Project
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1935-1940
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ritz, Abigail (photography)
Cooper, Ken (biography)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts
Object #FA18206
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
jpeg, 795 KB
jpeg, 6 MB
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Still image
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
113
Federal Art Project
Henry J. Meloy
New Deal Gallery
painting