https://openvalley.org/items/show/1108
description: Against New York's skyline in the background, people relax in boats upon a body of water. The colors are cooler, with lots of dark and bright greens, and also lots of blues. The boaters are painted in warmer colors, along with red, to make them stand out more. Abernathy's brushstrokes are thick and heavy, giving this painting a rough texture. 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 from FAP.
creator: Abernathy, Inez, 1873-1956
source: New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18093
contributor: Ritz, Abigail (photography) Jackson, Madison (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
format: jpeg, 1 MB jpeg, 8.7 MB

https://openvalley.org/items/show/1109
description: A hilly landscape sets a picturesque scene of three vibrantly colored roses, placed in an ornate ceramic vase. Seemingly supported by a small black table, the vase and the roses overlook a hilly landscape with green grass and a bright blue lake. The sky behind it is a calming blue grey that contrasts sharply with the dark black table. The crisp edges of the table are also in contrast with the rolling hills, and the curved nature of the roses, including the rounded design of vase and how it is decorated. The combination of a clear sky, and pastel colors of pink, blue, green, and tan have a calming effect on the eye. 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.
creator: Alger, John [Hebert], 1879-1967

https://openvalley.org/items/show/1110
description: This landscape portrays the rural mountainous region in western Massachusetts known as the Berkshires. Sketched entirely in black and white, the rolling hills and clusters of trees appear almost gloomy. A series of farms, divided by thin wire fences, make up the majority of the middle ground. The top half of the lithograph shows a series of light grey clouds, providing a sense of movement that parallels the tall, wispy grasses in the foreground. About the Artist: Born in the Bronx, New York, Brandfield studied at the National Academy of Design, the Art Student’s League and Cooper Union. According to one profile he was “an accomplished woodblock artist and lithographer active in the graphic arts division of the New York City WPA. He has been exhibited at the Chicago Art Institute, Los Angeles Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art and the New York Public Library” (A-D Magazine 6.5 [June-July 1940]). As of 1932 Brandfield was working at the New York Public Library; in 1939, his lithograph “Circus” was selected for a traveling WPA show that stopped in places like Butte, MT; Casper, WY; and Miami, OK. He moved to California at least by 1960 and lived in Grover Beach beginning in 1977, where he continued to work as a printmaker. 6 works at National Gallery of Art. 3 works at Smithsonian American Art Museum. 17 works at Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2 works at Newark Museum.1 work at Baltimore Museum of Art. 1 work at Detroit Institute of Arts. 3 more images at FAP.
creator: Brandfield, Dayton, 1911-1993

https://openvalley.org/items/show/1111
description: Cole's painting is very still and serene. There is virtually no movement--even the water is calm--and the air appears suffused with a hazy glow. The scene's imbalanced composition leaves a space for an implied sunrise or sunset at right. Cole's simplification into a few chosen objects draws our eyes to the boats in the water, their color contrasting with the surrounding scenery. About the Artist: Born in Staatsburg-on-Hudson, NY, Cole was named after two renowned painters of the Hudson River School: Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and John William Casilear (1811-1893). He attended school at the Riverview Military Academy in Poughkeepsie, NY (1900-04) and Harvard University (1905) before turning his attention to painting studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1905-11) and Académie Julian, Paris (1912). In 1909, he published a history in New England Magazine on Old St. Mary’s Church at Newton’s Lower Falls, illustrated by his own paintings. Cole served in the US Navy between 1917 and 1919, and beginning in May 1918 worked under William Andrew Mackay in a special unit for the camouflage of ships and submarines at the Bureau of Construction and Repair. During the final eight months of World War I, more than 1,200 US ships were painted with so-called “disruptive coloration”. After the war, he showed his talents at a Knoedler Gallery exhibition of Allied Commander portraits, Cole’s praised as “having a personality all their own with the dark rich coloring in the figures and the well-modeled faces contrasted against the dark background” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle 19 Oct. 1919: 77). He went on to exhibit his work widely, including the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Art Institute of Chicago. A reviewer of his 1927 exhibition of 33 portraits at Ainslee Gallery wrote: “In all cases the portraits are distinguished by a sincerity and a happy achievement of the most difficult of all painters’ problems, that of satisfying both sitt…
creator: Cole, Thomas Casilear, 1888-1976

https://openvalley.org/items/show/1112
description: A cool colored, slightly impressionistic seascape, "Open Sea" displays the tumult and beauty of waves on the ocean juxtaposed with the serenity of passing clouds overhead. The artist uses the natural contrast between the blue and white colors to evoke mixed feelings of relaxation and suspense. 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.
creator: Alexandrovich, Albert, b. 1904

https://openvalley.org/items/show/1113
description: We see a steamboat on a river, its importance shown via a stack located at the center of Burliuk's composition and by how much space the boat itself occupies--seemingly the width of the river. The watercolor is drawn in a neo-primitive style, especially with the squat figures in foreground. Earth and sky are painted using the same hues; the steamboat incorporates some of them into itself. About the Artist: Among the most accomplished and internationally known of the New Deal Gallery artists, Burliuk called himself “The Father of Russian Futurism” with good reason. He was an important figure in early 20th-century avant-garde circles, collaborating or exhibiting alongside painters like Kandinsky, Picasso, and Rousseau; writing poetry with Mayakovski, Yessenin, and Gorky; and counting as friends composers like Rachmaninoff, Scriabine, Gershwin, and Prokofiev. He painted a portrait of groundbreaking filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. The multitalented artist—whose name sometimes is spelled Burlyuk—was born in Kharkov, Russia, attended various art schools in Europe, and became an energetic creator of multimedia happenings that anticipate performance art: drinking tea under a suspended piano; staging an exhibition of paintings in a coal mine. His constantly changing style has been characterized as Fauvist, Cubist, Futurist, Social Realist, and Neo-Primitivist. Burliuk lived through the Russian revolutions before relocating to Japan (1920-22) and then eventually to America (1922), claiming to have crossed into Alaska using as his passport a Vanity Fair article about him. He became a US citizen in 1930 and lived the rest of his life on Long Island. Between 1923-1940 he worked as art editor and proofreader for a communist newspaper published in New York called Russkiĭ golos (Russian Voice). Throughout his life Burliuk was a prolific painter (creating an estimated 18,000 pictures), self-published with his wife Marussia the art magazine Color and Rhyme (1931-1966), and wrote several…
creator: Burliuk, David, 1882-1967
source: New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18126
contributor: Ritz, Abigail (photography) Domon, Victoria (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)

https://openvalley.org/items/show/1114
description: This painting displays a park scene using a variety of pastels, dusty colors, and vivid greens. We see a sandy sky and cool-toned trees in the background; the middle ground hosts a hedgerow outlined on the bottom with a vivid row of red flowers. In the foreground, three trees stand in full bloom, with two to the left side framing the wall on the right. The wall has a pot and a sculpture that frame the third tree. A sidewalk cuts in front of this scene. About the Artist: We haven’t located much reliable information about this artist. Bank created 4 works for the Index of American Design, one of which reads: “Unfinished on account of ‘Pink Slip’ September 3rd1937.”
creator: Bank, Moses
source: New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18113
contributor: Ritz, Abigail (photography) VanOstrand, Griffin (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)

https://openvalley.org/items/show/1115
description: 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.
creator: Alexandrovich, Albert, b. 1904

https://openvalley.org/items/show/1116
description: 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.
creator: Alger, John [Herbert], 1879-1967

https://openvalley.org/items/show/1117
description: 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.
creator: Baumbach, Harold, 1903-2002
source: New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object Number: FA18114
contributor: Ritz, Abigail (photography) Schmeer, Samantha (biography) Cooper, Ken (biography)