A clean sunny painting that shows a chapel next to a tall tree, beneath a light blue sky. Painted very smoothly with little to no noticeable brush strokes, this illustrates a warm and amiable picture with a pleasant vibe. Boasts a green, light sky blue, and reddish-mahogany color scheme. About the Artist: The son of Irish immigrants, Alger was born in Boston, MA and studied at the Lowell Institute of Design and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Around 1914, he began dividing his time between Massachusetts and showing his work in New York group exhibitions; a 1921 review of the Whitney Studio Club declared that its “chief interest centers about the technical novelty of John Alger. He has painted some sand dunes with a sweeping grace despite the fact that his colors, always modest, are laid down flatly and without accent” (New York Tribune 18 Dec. 1921: 50). Another admiring critic thought Alger had “developed a point of view which represents the utmost in simplification without, however, becoming in any sense of the word an abstractionist” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle 7 Mar. 1926: 66). Alger was a founding member of the Salons of America. In later years, he seems to have taught art lessons in addition to his painting. 5 more images at FAP.
This work displays a man suspended off the ground, surrounded by a variety of birds. The man himself looks to be St. Francis. The birds surrounding him are varied, with different species and sizes. The etching is darkly colored, primarily using blacks and whites. Behind the subject, the background is almost entirely black. Elements of circular halos can be seen surrounding the man, and rays of light are emanating from his head. About the Artist: Born in Cologne, Germany to a Jewish family, Eichenberg moved to Berlin where he worked ten years for Ullstein Publications, one of the country’s largest publishers. He fled to New York in 1933 amidst the rise of Nazism. One of Eichenberg’s first jobs in the US was creating illustrations for The Nation and he taught art lessons at The New School for five years; later, he founded the Pratt Center for Contemporary Printmaking. Recalling this challenging decade, Eichberg spoke fondly of WPA support for artists like him: “I went there with a few of my wooden engravings, or prints and asked him what I could do. It was just as simple as that. He said, ‘Oh, this is marvelous work. Go ahead and do what you want to do.’ It was that simple. There were no strings attached to it... I got box wood, which is very hard to get—the WPA had kind of a supply room and everything we needed. You had to say what you needed, and you got it. They bought the tools. They bought the gravers and they sharpened the gravers and you took your material home with you. You just picked it up there—beautiful wood blocks, any size” (Oral History Interview). Eichenberg became a sought-after illustrator for more than a hundred books—Poe, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Swift, the Brontës, numerous children’s stories—but he was especially moved by a request to create prints for Dorthy Day’s Catholic Worker magazine: “She said she had seen clippings of my work in the hovels of coal miners and so on, people in all parts of the world; people who could not read the Catholic Worker but they understood my very simple images of saints and portraits of people important in the Catholic worker movement.” Eichenberg was a witty commentator on current affairs; his print at the NDG references both St. Francis’s sermon to the birds and the pretensions of high-altitude balloon flights during the 1930s, like those undertaken at the Century of Progress in 1933. In later life he contributed talks, essays, and books on his medium, including The Art of the Print (1976) and The Wood and the Engraver (1977). Oral history interviews in 1964 and 1979. 12 works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 19 works at Smithsonian Museum of American Art. 105 works at Harvard Art Museum. 9 more images at FAP, including companions to his lithograph at NDG: “Preaching to the Animals,” “Preaching to the Fishes.”
This watercolor painting is a landscape of the quintessential farm in rural America. The most striking objects are the bright colored buildings that contrast with lighter-colored foliage and land. The composition is quite empty, a majority of the space being filled with the land and sky. The buildings are composed of basic shapes with sharp angles but the rest of the painting uses large brush strokes to create a landscape that appears to flow across the canvas. The vehicle that hides in the corner represents the change from traditional farming methods that clashed with the new innovations of the 1930s. About the Artist: Like NDG artists Lucie Bayard and A.E. Cederquist, Cunning was a student of the famous artist-teacher Robert Henri at the New York School of Art. He remained close to this circle of artists via the Whitney Studio Club, and several of his works were featured in Whitney Bienniels or museum collections: “Old Dock” (1927); “Sunset—New York Bay” (1932); “Roadside Market” (1934). His 1934 painting “Manhattan Skyline,” created for the Public Works of Art Program, is at Smithsonian American Art Museum. 1 work at Whitney Museum of American Art. 2 works at the Brooklyn Museum. 1 more image at FAP.
The subject of this painting is a vase of white flowers. The flowers themselves are large and take up a significant portion of the area, but are balanced out by a multicolored vase underneath. The vase seems to have the pattern of some sort of animal in a variety of colors. The background is beige and displays some shadows, indicating curvature or a corner. The flower and its vase are the only subjects in this painting. About the Artist: There is some contradictory information about this NDG artist, including the Federal Art Project listing his paintings as “Earl Godwin”—perhaps the confusion due to a prominent journalist having that name. Godwin Earl was teaching at the Los Angeles Art Institute as of 1928. For the 1930 census, in Los Angeles, Earl gave his birthdate as 1865 and his birthplace as Argentina; for the 1940 census, in New York, he gave his birthdate as 1860 and birthplace as New York. The 1860 birthdate seems more likely, since in 1941 he penned an epigram entitled “I’m Over Eighty”: “I am very tender hearted, so / I want to gently drop, / Into a vat of boiling oil, / The pest who calls me ‘Pop’ ” (New York Sun 11 Feb. 1941: 84). Everything that is known about Earl points toward a talented but curmudgeonly painter struggling amidst the Great Depression, in part due to his conservative standards of what constituted art. In response to MoMA’s plan to bring art supplies to soldiers in camps, Earl called it “another futile attempt to make people believe that art is something one can produce after a few days’ practice, as one would learn to whitewash the garden fence at home.” He instead argued for rigorous training (Godwin Earl, “Dark View of Art,” letter to editor, New York Sun 22 April 1942: 20). 11 more images at FAP.
The depiction of the foreground illustrates a rural setting in the midst of an urbanizing town in the background – a changing sociocultural climate in New York. Abernathy uses a quick, painterly style to show that the brushstrokes are an instrumental part of the canvas, something purposeful given the context of her formal training. She exercises her education in the way she portrays the depth of the painting – the contrast between the two portrayals of different lifestyles emphasizes a changing direction among a rural discourse of life. About the Artist: Born in Summerville, AK, Abernathy studied at the Art Academy in Cincinnati and later in Europe. She supported herself by teaching art and elocution at Belmont College (TN), Stanford Female College (KY), Columbia Female Institute (TN), the University of Arkansas, and the Florida Female College. At this last instution, when a fire broke out Abernathy guided her students to safety rather than saving her own art and equipment; the Florida legislature passed a special bill to help compensate her loss (The Weekly True Democrat 29 Sept 1905: 1). She studied art for a period in Paris, and her painting “Reverie” was shown at the 1902 Salon des artistes français, described by one reporter as “the full-length figure of a girl seated, with a background of dull blues and yellows. A springtime freshness pervades the picture” (San Francisco Chronicle 26 Oct. 1902: 6). Her works were exhibited at the Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, and the National Academy of Design. Two more digital images from FAP<o:p></o:p>
This painting depicts a boxing match, in which one of the boxers successfully knocks out his opponent. The victor, standing upright on the right side sporting turquoise shorts, looks confident and strong as he watches his opponent on the ground along with the referee. His opponent is curled up on the floor of the ring, his face downturned and covered by his arms. The colors are vibrant, and the work’s shadows create a realistic effect. Braverman's painting takes on new significance when considered in relation to economic conditions during the 1930s. About the Artist: Born in New York City, Braverman’s subsequent life tracks alongside the changing fortunes of radical politics in America. He appears to have lived in Chicago, studying in Paris with André L’hote, but he also was listed as Chairman of the People’s Institute in Toledo, OH during 1911. Perhaps his debut as an artist began in 1907, at age 19, with political cartoons published in To-Morrow Magazine: on subjects like plutocracy and class-based sexual politics. During the 1910s “Barney” was Associate Editor and Circulation Manager for The Progressive Woman in Chicago. It was founded as The Socialist Woman in 1907 by Josephine Conger-Kaneko and in 1913 would become The Coming Nation before folding in 1914. He produced the magazine’s masthead much of its political art: on child labor, domestic work, and women in trade unions. Meanwhile, Braverman also was drawing political cartoons for The Masses (1912) and publishing pamphlets like “Suffragists, Watch Out for the Wolf!” (1913). After passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and as socialist unity fragmented under the duress of Palmer Raids and systematic anti-red legislation, Braverman became disillusioned and moved into poster art and advertising. By the 1920s he worked for the Curtis Company agency in Detroit, MI and then in 1926 the Hamman group in Oakland, CA. During his time in Detroit, Braverman played an important role in smuggling copies of James Joyce’s banned novel Ulysses. In 1922, the novelist Ernest Hemingway—who knew Braverman—suggested an arrangement with publisher Sylvia Beach: she would ship 300 books to Windsor, Ontario, where Braverman had rented a room; he would smuggle them across the US border individually, then re-bundle them and ship via a private express company. He asked only to be reimbursed for his expenses (no fee charged) at a time of heavy border patrols during Prohibition. Historian Kevin Birmingham writes that “it required him to break the law every time he crossed the border with a copy of Ulysses, possessed a copy for distribution in Michigan and shipped the book across state lines. He risked a five-thousand-dollar fine and five years in prison, but he would do it anyway” (The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses 236-237). Later Braverman created works for the Federal Art Project, including “Down and Out” (1937)—perhaps modeled on the boxing paintings of George Bellows, like “Dempsey and Firpo” (1924). One critic reviewing a 1936 group show complained that Braverman’s “static figures against his dynamic backgrounds drop his picture to a poster level...he suffers from commercial art influence, with its false emphasis on showiness” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle 9 Feb. 1936: 40). But Braverman’s work always had been grounded in the striking image, and postwar Pop Art soon would incorporate both political and commercial iconography. Braverman always had a great interest in films, during the 1940s working upon an authorized biography of the director D.W. Griffith that never was published. He lived the last years of his life in St. Paul, MN.
We see a river flowing between two banks lined with trees. The trees are mostly bare however, they appear as they are going to start budding. The colors in this painting are cooler--blues and greens--but there is a hint of warm yellow in the lower left corner. About the Artist: Born in Summerville, AK, Abernathy studied at the Art Academy in Cincinnati and later in Europe. She supported herself by teaching art and elocution at Belmont College (TN), Stanford Female College (KY), Columbia Female Institute (TN), the University of Arkansas, and the Florida Female College. At this last instution, when a fire broke out Abernathy guided her students to safety rather than saving her own art and equipment; the Florida legislature passed a special bill to help compensate her loss (The Weekly True Democrat 29 Sept 1905: 1). She studied art for a period in Paris, and her painting “Reverie” was shown at the 1902 Salon des artistes français, described by one reporter as “the full-length figure of a girl seated, with a background of dull blues and yellows. A springtime freshness pervades the picture” (San Francisco Chronicle 26 Oct. 1902: 6). Her works were exhibited at the Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, and the National Academy of Design. Two more images at FAP.
Baumbach’s work depicts a summer landscape in what appears to be a rural farm town from an aerial view. The colors are bright, and cool tone variations of green dominate much of the space. The greens are contrasted by a blue waterway and a yellow field which stretch across the center of the painting, and by several red building structures that sit at the bottom. Rolling hills stretch back into the horizon. Despite the wide view, there is much attention to detail and the painting also features roads, animals, crops, and fences. About the Artist: Born on New York’s Lower East Side, Baumbach was the son of an upholsterer and largely a self-taught painter. His original emphasis was upon upstate landscapes; later, he moved on to increasing abstraction in his work, influenced perhaps by his friends Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, but always with his own distinct style. Baumbach was among the founders of the radical journal Art Front (1934-1937), created as “a publication which speaks for the artist, battles for his economic security and guides him in his artistic efforts” (Art Front 1.1 [Nov. 1934]: 2.) Later, his name would come up amidst investigations into “subversive organizations” by the House Un-American Activities Committee. After World War II Baumbach taught painting at Brooklyn College. Although highly regarded by fellow artists, popular success eluded him: “Strong willed, allergic to fashion, even to success, he persisted in going his own way, refusing to sell to prospective buyers he thought did not admire the work properly and breaking off relations with galleries usually after only a show or two” (New York Times 4 Jan. 2002). He was the father of writer Jonathan Baumbach and grandfather of film director Noah Baumbach. 1 work at the Whitney Museum of American Art. 1 work at the Hirshorn Museum. 2 works at the Brooklyn College Library. 1 more image at FAP.
An ornate ceramic pot serves as the base for seven light pink flowers. With thick brown stems and plenty of green leaves, the flowers stand strong in the pot filled with dirt. The scene depicted on the pot brings culture and an ornate air to the scene. Against a monochrome backdrop, the painting’s foreground encompasses a tan, stitched mat where the pot and flowers are perched. About the Artist: The son of Irish immigrants, Alger was born in Boston, MA and studied at the Lowell Institute of Design and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Around 1914, he began dividing his time between Massachusetts and showing his work in New York group exhibitions; a 1921 review of the Whitney Studio Club declared that its “chief interest centers about the technical novelty of John Alger. He has painted some sand dunes with a sweeping grace despite the fact that his colors, always modest, are laid down flatly and without accent” (New York Tribune 18 Dec. 1921: 50). Another admiring critic thought Alger had “developed a point of view which represents the utmost in simplification without, however, becoming in any sense of the word an abstractionist” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle 7 Mar. 1926: 66). Alger was a founding member of the Salons of America. In later years, he seems to have taught art lessons in addition to his painting. 5 more images at FAP.
Because of its visible brush strokes, this painting is a highly impressionistic landscape of a rocky coastline meeting the sea. Here, the artist makes use of warm reds and browns to contrast the cool, refreshing quality of the ocean with the sturdy, homeliness of the Earth. About the Artist: Born in Odessa, Russia, Alexandrovich was trained in Belgium and France before immigrating to the US in 1925 (his citizenship sponsor was fellow marine artist Ragnar Olson). At a 1939 show, his art was praised as “bringing to the painting of the sea a sympathetic understanding and a subtlety of expression that set his work apart....Unlike the majority of painters of the sea, he knows the value of mystery and suggestion, and yet with it all contrives to convey a sense of the ocean's resistless weight and might” (New York Sun 29 April 1939: 12). 1 more image at FAP.