Two boats, a sailboat at left and a motor boat at right, are stationary on calm water. Trees that occupy the background of this piece are reflected by the water in which several moorings are stand. A sand hill or trail cuts into these trees. The painting is predominantly earth-toned, excluding the red stripes on both boats and the blue of the sky which is also reflected by the water. Note: an unfortunate repair of the painting has rendered the sailboat’s booms miscolored. About the Artist: Born in Baltimore, MD, Theobald was the eldest child of a famous eye surgeon at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. After attending college at that institution, where he was an artist for the school annual, he worked briefly as a caricaturist for the Baltimore Afternoon News (“Art News”). Early in Theobald’s career, he studied with André Castaigne, the popular French illustrator and painter. He was present to witness the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, sketching from Federal Hill and creating a lurid painting of fire and smoke that was described as “very appalling” in its sublime effect (“Picture”). Theobald began dividing his time betwen Baltimore and New York around 1900, his main interests to that point focused upon sporting art. In 1915, he married Elizabeth Sturtevant, a sculptor, and exhibited his work in venues like the Corcoran Gallery, the Beginning in the mid-1920s, the divided their time between Staten Island and Orlando, FL. They received permission from the Ringling Brothers to spend several months at the circus’s winter home in Sarasota, resulting in distinctive works like sculptural castings of “Miss Congo” the gorilla, and paintings of bareback riders, clowns on stilts, and “Elephant Being Manicured” (“Theobald Art”). 5 more images at FAP. Sources Consulted: “Picture of the Great Fire,” Baltimore Sun 12 Mar. 1904: 6; “Art News from Baltimore,” American Art News 3.71 (18 Mar. 1905): 5; “Theobald Art Exhibitions on Display In New Showing of Art Association,” Orlando Sentinel 17 Mar. 1929: 15.
New Deal Art Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object # FA18279
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Stern, Alison (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
An off-white house, set behind a tree with branches reaching over the roof, sits in an opulent environment of greens, browns, and yellows. Visible brush strokes in the siding of the house show shadows and rotting wood; in the tree, they texture the roundness of the trunk and the wispiness of the uppermost limbs, seeming to stretch as far as they can until they taper off. A thin, copper ladder rests against the porch, while further in the distance sits an indistinct red building. About the Artist: Born in New York, New York, Varian studied at Cooper Union after dropping out of high school at age 15. Graduating with honors, she went on to study under John Sloan at the Art Students League. During her time there, she met Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and the two formed a professional relationship, opening the Studio Club with fifteen other prominent New York artists in 1918. Varian developed her skills as a Colorist in Paris, where she studied from 1920 to 1922. While there, she held her first one-woman show at the Durand-Ruel Galleries. Choosing to move to Woodstock, New York after Paris was a social choice for Varian; many of her colleagues from the Studio Club and Art Students League had settled there to serve in teaching roles at the Woodstock School of Art, where she exhibited on numerous occasions. Varian also showed at the Brooklyn Museum, Carnegie International, Corcoran Galleries, Downtown Galleries, Museum of Modern Art (1936), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Yale University. Critics and viewers alike commented on her use of color as a focal point of her pieces; one noted her “luminous values and clarity of line”, while highlighting the “refreshing simplicity” of her brush strokes (“Varian”). Another praised how each of her paintings “demonstrate her concern with beauty”, and likewise her perfection of “depth, space, and light” perception (“Woodstock”). With her upbringing in the Arts Students League, she was “among the progressive artists challenging the strictures” of traditional art (Kiehl). Many of Varian’s contemporaries worked with Cubism, Precisionism, and Surrealism; the perspective she applied to her work is uncanny in nature, with attention paid to the accentuation of brush strokes and distorted dimensions. In offering lush color contrast and variety, however, Varian displays an emotional complexity rooted in natural environments. 6 works at the Whitney Museum of Art. 5 works at Woodstock Artists Association & Museum. 1 work at the Woodstock School of Art. 1 work at Smithsonian American Art Museum. 4 more images at FAP. Papers can be found at Archives of American Art. Sources Consulted: “Varian Exhibition Open at Parnassus to Sept. 10,” Kingston Daily Freeman 25 Aug. 1953: 9; “Woodstock Artist Has Showing in L.I. University,” Kingston Daily Freeman 6 Nov. 1961: 24; David W. Kiehl, Between the Wars: Women Artists of the Whitney Studio Club and Museum (Whitney Museum of Art, 1997).
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18282
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Michalak, Benjamin (biography)
This oil on canvas still-life features a modestly decorated table. The primary object, the vase of overflowing peonies, demands our attention. A few, smaller objects also adorn this table such as small candles, a looking glass, and a gold statue. At first glance, it is easy to miss the oversized plate that sits like a shadow behind the peonies. It takes on a natural personality, such as a full moon, especially when juxtaposed behind bright and delicate flowers. There is a balance between natural and man-made objects in this piece, an arrangement of flowers from the outdoors complements the craftsmanship of the statue or the plate. This is a celebration of the domestic sphere, balancing unpredictable nature with human ability. About the Artist: Born in Dresden, Germany, Schiff immigrated to the US in 1915 with her mother Lydia and father Jacob, a portrait painter. Her formative years were spent in Chicago, where she received training from her father and was featured at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1934. Her work also was exhibited by the Hadassah women’s Zionist organization of that city. Shortly thereafter, perhaps in 1935, Schiff moved to New York and took classes at the Art Students League, meanwhile showing her work at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit. Although her paintings at the New Deal Gallery collection consist of still lifes, Schiff took great pleasure in portraiture; at a 1941 show she sketched visitors to her own exhibit and then displayed them on the walls (“Art Show”). The physicist Albert Einstein was a subject of her sketching. In 1943 she married James Vrettos, then moved to Colorado in 1956. Schiff’s work took a turn toward more chimerical subject matter, described by gallery director Simon Zalkind as tableaux of paper-doll characters: “Schiff's women, alternately alluring, playful and coy are always being seen. Figuratively and often literally, they are ‘on stage’. As Schiff's work evolves through the decades her women progressively lose the appearance of physical solidity, acquiring instead cartoon-like curves and contours. Bodies are flattened and appear to float weightlessly.” Her son recalls that Schiff “remained a loving, joyous, positively spirited person until the end of her life—true to her name Luba—Luboff in Russian meaning love.” 3 more images at FAP. Sources Consulted: “Art Show Continues,” Gloverville Morning Herald 8 May 1941: 20. For additional information, a special thanks to Schiff’s son James Vrettos.
Two curtains in warm yellow and pink frame the painting from the right, with the rest of the background in a mesh of cool blues and greens in a quasi-watercolor style. The brushstrokes are evident and very thick in some parts of the background. The middle ground houses an emerald vase with seven pink tulips, six yellow tulips, and two red tulips all in full bloom. The area of the clearest focus is in the foreground, centered on the pink paint jar, with paint splotches around it, but an obvious absence of a paint brush. Even in the darkest shadows of the painting, there is no black paint used, and other colors mixed together to create darker hues. This demonstrates formal art training, because the usage of black paint, when mixed with white paint, grays out a painting. By not using black paint, the vibrant hues stand out more. About the Artist: Little is known about George Spector. He was a Russian immigrant to the United States and lived in the New York City area. Between 1913 and 1914 he got a diploma from the Cooper Union Night School of Art and received recognition for the category “Drawing from Life.” Given Spector's grasp of detail and three dimensional modeling, it seems possible that he had formal art training prior to the Cooper Union. He exhibited at the Salons of America in 1926 and 1927. 2 works at the Index of American Design. 7 more images at FAP.
A traditional oil on canvas still life with visible brush strokes features two and a half green-yellow pears, a golden pineapple, a paring knife, a bottle of Italian wine, and a red bowl propped up as the centerpiece on a wooden dining table. In facing the window to the right, a chair juts out from the make-shift blue backdrop. The contrasting but warm colors reflect the different origins of the items found in a classic American household. About the Artist: Born in Dresden, Germany, Schiff immigrated to the US in 1915 with her mother Lydia and father Jacob, a portrait painter. Her formative years were spent in Chicago, where she received training from her father and was featured at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1934. Her work also was exhibited by the Hadassah women’s Zionist organization of that city. Shortly thereafter, perhaps in 1935, Schiff moved to New York and took classes at the Art Students League, meanwhile showing her work at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit. Although her paintings at the New Deal Gallery collection consist of still lifes, Schiff took great pleasure in portraiture; at a 1941 show she sketched visitors to her own exhibit and then displayed them on the walls (“Art Show”). The physicist Albert Einstein was a subject of her sketching. In 1943 she married James Vrettos, then moved to Colorado in 1956. Schiff’s work took a turn toward more chimerical subject matter, described by gallery director Simon Zalkind as tableaux of paper-doll characters: “Schiff's women, alternately alluring, playful and coy are always being seen. Figuratively and often literally, they are ‘on stage’. As Schiff's work evolves through the decades her women progressively lose the appearance of physical solidity, acquiring instead cartoon-like curves and contours. Bodies are flattened and appear to float weightlessly.” Her son recalls that Schiff “remained a loving, joyous, positively spirited person until the end of her life—true to her name Luba—Luboff in Russian meaning love.” 3 more images at FAP. Sources Consulted: “Art Show Continues,” Gloverville Morning Herald 8 May 1941: 20. For additional information, a special thanks to Schiff’s son James Vrettos.
Courtesy of Westchester Historical Society # HC-099
We behold five white Easter lilies in a glass jug on a red tablecloth. The background is beige, but Spinchorn has dabbed in hints of red, purple, and orange. The lilies and their jug fully fill out the canvas, leaving little negative space. The background beige ends where the lilies begin; whites and highlights remain untouched to leave the white canvas shining through the watercolor. About the Artist: Born in Broby, Sweden, Sprinchorn traveled to the US in 1903 at age sixteen to study with Robert Henri at the New York School of Art, continuing his study through 1907. An early exhibition at the Union League in 1908 made a deep impression upon one critic, who called “Winter Day” and its ferryboat on the East River an image “we shall never forget—the dreariest, wettest canvas we ever saw, and therein is its power...It is realism pushed to the eleventh degree” (“Around”). After a period managing the Henri Art School, Sprinchorn taught at the Art Students League in Los Angeles and then traveled to Paris before returning to the New York art scene. His work appeared in the famous Armory Show of 1913, at the 1914 World’s Fair, and numerous group and solo shows. “But in 1919,” Sprinchorn later wrote, “chance brought me to the Maine woods,” and it is for his paintings of rural life there that he is perhaps best known, first during the 1920s and then periodically between 1937 and 1952. Against this desire to grow as an artist were what Sprinchorn termed “almost continuous economic sieges,” and Sprinchorn’s abilities as an administrator—which resulted in his working as director of the New Gallery for a period. His work was respected by contemporaries like Robert Henri, Marsden Hartley, and the avant-garde Stettheimer sisters, and has grown in reputation since then. 11 works at the Portland Museum of Art. 4 works at the Farnsworth Museum of Art. 8 works at the Brooklyn Museum. 3 works at the Memorial Art Gallery. 1 work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. 16 works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1 more image at FAP. Works Consulted: “Around the Galleries,” New York Sun 14 Jan. 1908: 6; Chris Huntington/Charlotte McGill, Carl Springchorn Admiration Society
This painting features a wilderness scene, strikingly symmetrical in its composition, with a pond, undulating row of trees, hills, and clouds. It is rendered mainly in earthy brown tones with a small pop of blue in the color of the pond. Waltemath’s painting itself is very still but, we can infer some movement with the depiction of clouds in the sky, reflected upon the pond. About the Artist: Born as August Fredrik Vilhelm Axelsen in Tönsberg, Norway, dire economic conditions there led to his immigration—at eight years old—to the US with his maternal aunt and her husband, Wilhelm Waltemath of Germany. That family settled in Minneapolis, MN, where William eventually began work as a printer. His paintings were exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Salons of America, and Society of Independent Artists, along with group and individual events. At a 1931 show in Baltimore, MD, the art critic Henry McBride wrote that Waltemath “commands rich pigment and has a sense of picture making, though his tendency is toward the somber.” By 1932, however, Waltemath’s professional and financial situation had suffered; he was one of a dozen New York painters selected for inclusion in a show featuring artists “who are for the most part unknown, indigent, or neglected” (“Unsung”). The Federal Art Project provided a crucial lifeline, for example in 1937 his work shown at a WPA exhibition along with fellow NDG artist Carl Nordell. He remained active in civic organizations, notably as chairman of the Art League of Nassau County. There is something moving to to a photograph of Waltemath with one of his paintings, where it’s revealed that he considers himself “a printer by trade and an artist because he insists on being one....He has been unemployed for some time, but refuses to allow that to halt his painting” (“An Artist”). Sources Consulted: Henry McBride, “Some Foreign Impressions of Our Art,” Baltimore Sun 22 Nov. 1931: 66; “Unsung Artists Exhibit at Show on Heights,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle 3 Sept. 1932: 3; “An Artist—By Choice!” New York Daily News 10 Jan. 1937: 181.
We look at what appears to be a table, many different items rest on its surface. Towards the bottom right corner there is half of a block of cheese that is hidden through the strokes of the table. Moving further up into the middle ground, there is a pear standing on a blue piece of cloth and towards it right side there is clay pot resting on a red piece of cloth with strips. The pot has a dove resting on an olive branch. Behind these two objects, there is a orange hidden behind the pear and a flower pot with numerous Canna Lilies. The plant seems fatigued by the lack of space in the frame. Most of the objects presented in this piece are juxtaposed by its surrounding as these natural objects are constrained by their surrounding. About the Artist: Born in New York City, Winograd’s parents Sigmund and Sadie Winograd both were immigrants—from Poland and Russia, respectively. Their daughter seems to have been born an artist. She was first recognized at the age of 10, winning a gold medal in the Wanamaker competition for an oil painting of a New York City street scene. Winograd attended the Art Students League of New York, where were she was taught by George Bridgman and Guy Pène du Bois. She pursued further education at the National Academy of Design and City College of New York after graduation, becoming an art teacher in the New York City Public Schools. During the 1930s Winograd worked in the WPA Easel divsion and, throughout World War II, in the USO’s Hospital Sketching Program: she drew portraits of wounded soldiers recovering in military hospitals. In 1951 Winograd married physicist Felix E. Geigner, who had worked on the Manhattan Project and would go on to research for NASA's Mercury and Apollo projects. Winograd later earned her BFA and MFA from the George Washington University. According to her family she spent the last 25 years of her life “chang[ing] the paradigm of aging” by challanging the stereotype of the elderly’s inablity to be active in different forms. Winograd died peacefully in her sleep at the age of one hundred. Source Consulted: “Helen Winograd Geiger,” Ancestry.com. U.S. Cemetery and Funeral Home Collection [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2011.
Jenne, Daniel C., 1814-1886 (Creator) Cooper, John A. (John Alder), b. 1830 (Draftsman) Taylor, William B., 1824-1895 (Creator) Sweet, S. H. (Sylvanus Howe), 1830-1899 (Creator)
Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library. "Lakes and reservoirs, head waters, Moose and Black Rivers" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1862.