Against a cool background of blue-grays and white, we see a hillside of innumerable colors flowing downhill in nearly a molten state. In contrast to Fastovsky’s general blending technique are several smaller clusters of intensely pointilized colors—at lower left, for example. Even a telephone pole draws upon this for its green insulators, and the dreamy fluidity of landscape, house, and rail infrastructure is very attractive. It's possible that the location for this painting is the Breakneck Ridge rail tunnel, in which case there may be a kind of hidden joke: the building shown is an access point down into the Catskill Aqueduct, whose waters cross from Storm King (on the west side of the Hudson) to Breakneck Ridge (on the east), by way of a deep tunnel underneath the river. About the Artist: Born in Chernobyl, Russia, Fastovsky studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Kiev before immigrating to the US in 1913 and becoming a citizen in 1921. He showed his work at Municipal Art Galleries, New York, in 1938. Fastovsky legally changed his name to Isaac Foster in 1946 and by 1955 was living in Tuscon, AZ, showing his paintings at local sites and restoring old canvases. Looking back upon his work for various federal art projects, he estimated that he had created 40-50 paintings during this period: “Someday I’m going to visit various state and federal buildings throughout the country and see if I can locate the pictures. I don’t have any idea where they’re hanging now” (Arizona Daily Star 16 Oct. 1955: 24). 9 more images at FAP.
Although a train platform in the foreground bears the name “Small Town,” the frame of Yaghjian’s painting had referenced Beacon, NY before getting crossed out in favor of this more universal theme. We are invited to ascend a wooden stairway into a quaint town whose buildings are arrayed upon its hillside: a brick commercial building near the tracks, a church and more ornate homes higher up. Warm earthtones and green foliage predominate. Small traces of the forces that would transform such towns lurk at the corners of the painting, like telephone wires or an automobile at lower right. About the Artist: Born in Harpoot, Armenia, Yaghjian immigrated to the US with his family in 1907 and was raised in Providence, RI. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design on scholarship and received a BA in Fine Arts in 1930. He then continued his studies with the Art Students League, where he met John French Sloan and Stuart Davis, both significant influences upon his work. His work was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery, the National Gallery, and many other venues; he was the subject of numerous solo shows. At the 1936 Whitney Biennial, Anita Brenner grouped him with artists like Edward Hopper and NDG artist Dorothy Varian in their use of colors that are “dominant in most American landscapes, intense, precise and small within great space and immense sky.” Some of his most important contributions came as an art teacher, initially for the Art Students League in New York (1938-1943), then briefly at the University of Missouri. In 1945 Yaghjian was hired to head the art faculty at the University of South Carolina, where he taught until retirement in 1972. He was known for painting scenes from everyday life, both in New York and in South Carolina; while he continually painted his surroundings, his style shifted throughout his career from realism to stylized abstraction to abstraction. He lived in Columbia for the rest of his life, where he still was dancing two nights a week at the age of 85. 1 work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. 1 work at the Gibbs Museum of Art. 1 work at the Chrysler Museum of Art. 1 work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1 more image at FAP. Oral history interview at University of South Carolina. Sources Consulted: Anita Brenner, “Younger Generation at Whitney Biennial,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle 15 Nov. 1936: 10C; South Carolina State Museum, “Edmund Yaghjian: A Retrospective” (16 March-16 September, 1997).
Not rendered with perfectly accurate optics, Archer’s still life nevertheless is a creative study in perspective and visual planes. Upon a table covered by the eponymous checkboard-patterned cloth, a crystal decanter and copper teapot sit incongruously next to each other. They are doubled in a mirror, complicated by its beveled edge and angled walls “behind” our point of view; viewer and painter alike have been effaced from the reflections. About the Artist: Archer grew up in Sea Cliff, NY, received his training at Yale University School of Fine Arts, and then worked in New York City during the 1930s as a commercial artist, placing works in publications like the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and This Week. Archer’s painting “Approaching Storm” was selected for two traveling exhibitions sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art: “Mystery and Sentiment” in 1940, and then “Romantic Painting in America” (1943-1944). During World War II, he was Art Director of the Army Education Program in the Philippines. After the war Archer, along with the marine artist Charles J. Lundgren, opened a studio in Roslyn, NY that combined exhibition space with evening art classes. 1 work at Smithsonian Museum of American Art. 4 more images at FAP.
A photograph doesn’t do justice to Sarkadi’s deft use of color and texture upon his paper medium. Were the painting’s few splashes of white removed, we would see three stems of tulip, along with a bit of greenery, in a glass jar set inside of a bowl. The splashes do not add depth to the painting but rather prevent a tidiness that elsewhere is rejected in favor of speckled shadows and reflections, unfilled sketch lines, and (through the years) paper that has itself become wrinkled. About the Artist: Born in Budapest, Hungary, Sarkadi relocated first to London and then, in 1914, to the US. His artistic life began as a dramatist, writing one-act plays that spanned his time in both countries: Within Four Walls (1900), Children at Play (1907), The Line of Life (1916), The Gusher (1928), Fourflusher (1928), and The Angel (1929). One published collection of these plays, however, features illustrations that may be Sarkadi’s and would indicate a longstanding interest in the visual arts, although his painting career dates to the early 1930s. He also exhibited sculptures on more than one occasion, showing himself to be a multitalented artist. Sarkadi’s paintings were shown at the Balzac Gallery, Ainslie Galleries, and the American Artists Congress. His friend Willy Pogany, a fellow artist from Hungary, wrote how “it is strange that a man so saturated with transcendental philosophy antagonistic to matter, should take up painting as a means of expresssion...But with Sarkadi the process is different....Color attracts him just as much as form is evaded, and here we find that his instinctive choice of vehicle for the mysticism and yearning for limitless space is more than justified by the result” (New York Sun 10 May 1924: 6). 3 works at the Brooklyn Museum. 12 more images at FAP.
At least two questions are implied by this painting’s title: which edge of the garden, and what is a garden? Due to a flattened plane and Sarkadi’s composition we see a row of hollyhocks and other tall flowers at the bottom of the canvas, with no indication of what lies between them and us; nor can we see what lies between them and houses further in the distance. A dense line of forest forms a backdrop to the homes, whose intriguing colors and patterns echo those of the flowers. Overhead, a tall tree on the forest’s “other” edge and a hint of blue sky. About the Artist: Born in Budapest, Hungary, Sarkadi relocated first to London and then, in 1914, to the US. His artistic life began as a dramatist, writing one-act plays that spanned his time in both countries: Within Four Walls (1900), Children at Play (1907), The Line of Life (1916), The Gusher (1928), Fourflusher (1928), and The Angel (1929). One published collection of these plays, however, features illustrations that may be Sarkadi’s and would indicate a longstanding interest in the visual arts, although his painting career dates to the early 1930s. He also exhibited sculptures on more than one occasion, showing himself to be a multitalented artist. Sarkadi’s paintings were shown at the Balzac Gallery, Ainslie Galleries, and the American Artists Congress. His friend Willy Pogany, a fellow artist from Hungary, wrote how “it is strange that a man so saturated with transcendental philosophy antagonistic to matter, should take up painting as a means of expresssion...But with Sarkadi the process is different....Color attracts him just as much as form is evaded, and here we find that his instinctive choice of vehicle for the mysticism and yearning for limitless space is more than justified by the result” (New York Sun 10 May 1924: 6). 3 works at the Brooklyn Museum. 12 more images at FAP.
This painting uses a curious system of perspective. Objects in the distance—like mountains, birds, a tall tree, or the sky above—appear more figurative and natural than those nearby. Closer by, where we might expect to see detail, are abstract streaks and blotches of color. In the near foreground, a walking traveler and companion dog are rendered as semi-transparent in relation to their surroundings. They are walking toward the crest of a hill, perhaps toward the suggestion of a red roof but more accurately into a circular portal. About the Artist: We haven’t located any reliable information about this artist. Please contact us if you're able to help.
Vivid colors are accentuated via the time of day at which this painting is set—either at sunrise or sunset—and by comparison to a pale blue sky. The titular “spring tree” probably is a cherry in bloom, but a taller one also seems to display blossoms. Sabalsuskas’ unusual portrait orientation emphasizes not only the trees’ verticality, but a pastoral scene in the foreground of grazing cattle. Several brushstrokes appear to take pleasure in color for its own sake. About the Artist: We haven’t located any reliable information about this artist. Please contact us if you're able to help.
Golden light from low in the sky, at right, evokes a moment of gratitude for a year’s harvest—seemingly of corn shocks drying in the field. A person carrying a stick pause in front of one. Lush fields, green trees, and a gorgeous sky are shown to their best effect. The scene might pass for one of indigenous culture were it not for the rooflines of two houses in the distance, but the intent seems analogous. About the Artist: We haven’t located any reliable information about this artist. Please contact us if you're able to help.
In subject matter if not in style, there are resemblances between this painting and Georges Seurat’s famous A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884, but even more so William Blake’s “The Echoing Green.” Here the spirit seems exuberant as the painting's colored ballons, due perhaps to its “American” setting and youthful subjects. A gently sloping parkland ends alongside a pond occupied by a pair of swans, delighting a young child tended by a watchful nurse. Boys and girls of all ages manifest their play at different stages of childhood, save for two pensive young women: one looks out across the water toward adulthood, the other muses upon the hill. About the Artist: Born in Shelbyville, IN, Ross was the son of German immigrants. He studied with William Forsyth—part of the so-called “Hoosier Group” of painters—then moved to New York in 1905 after receiving a scholarship to study at the Art Students League. By 1911 he had relocated to Paris, working at Académie Julian with Richard E. Miller and William-Adolphe Bouguereau at Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Returning to the US ahead of the Great War, Ross located near Washington Square and produced a combination of paintings, privately commissioned murals, and commercial illustration. In 1935 for the Treasury Relief Art Project, Ross installed a massive, 20’ x 20’ painted mural in the Terre Haute, IN courtroom depicting the signing of England’s Magna Carta. First displayed at the Vanderbilt Gallery in New York, the work was praised for the “gay medieval trappings of the nobles and their retainers” while maintaining, for the purposes of a courtroom, a “treatment most dignified and conservative throughout” (New York Sun 28 June 1934: 24). His “Playtime” painting at NDG borrows from murals their organization of bodies in space and a sense of event, even pageantry. In later years Ross became a devout Catholic and painted several more church murals (Pierce). 11 more images at FAP. Sources Consulted: Mary Anne Pierce, “U.S. District Court Mural Arouses Curiosity Here,” Terre Haute Tribune 19 Mar. 1972: 26; “Brings Back Work He Painted Abroad,” Indianapolis Star 11 Feb. 1912: 32.
The vividness of this still life is the result of its muted brown background, combined with Rollo’s free use of white paint to highlight the tips of flowers in a vase. Shadows from light at the left side of his painting are minimized, creating an effect of the bouquet glowing with an illumination of its own. Casual field flowers thus transform a subdued domestic space. About the Artist: Born Giuseppe Rollo in Ragusa, Italy, he immigrated with his family to the US in 1913 and lived in Chicago (the spelling of his name possibly dating to this time so as to differentiate him from a well-known boxer living in the city). He worked as a newsroom copy boy while studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, then moved to New York in the late 1920s. His work was exhibited in places like the Whitney Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute, and at different venues in Woodstock, NY. Based upon extant works, Rollo appears to have moved easily between landscape, still life, and portrait genres. In 1934 the PWAP commissioned him to paint the portrait of Chicago mayor Edward Joseph Kelly (Chicago Tribune 15 Jan. 1934: 4). 3 works at the Whitney Museum of American Art. 3 works at the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum. 1 work at the National Gallery of Art. 1 work at Detroit Institute of the Arts. 2 works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 4 more images at FAP.