Alger's painting here depicts a lovely still life of a flowery plant which gives off a warm vibe with with its relatively light colors. Green and light red are the prominent colors in this illustration of a species closely related to sunflowers. Circling around the pinkish flower are green leaves, painted with in a realistic style. 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.
Six spotted lilies are surrounded by snapdragons, zinnias, and an incongruous “Radio” calendula. This latter flower, along with the lily stamens, appear to have been chosen for their delicate pointed shapes. Most of Alger’s still live is painted in cool grays and pinks, with splashes of hot yellows and orange. 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.
It’s possible that somewhere there is a Sung Harbor represented by this painting, but it’s more likely a typographical misreading of Snug Harbor—just across the water from New York on Staten Island. Sailor’s Snug Harbor was created in 1833 via a bequest from Robert Richard Randall’s estate; merchant seamen with no pensions were given a home in an expanding campus, some of whose dormitories are perhaps depicted in the background. Amemiya manages to fit more than a dozen sailboats into his compositon without it feeling cramped. Gentle wave movement against the sides of the boats, created by small overlapping brush strokes, create a sense of serenity. About the Artist: Born in Yamanashi prefecture, Japan, to a high-achieving family, Amemiya (whose name sometimes was spelled as “Amemya”) immigrated in 1908 to Tacoma, WA, where he painted designs on Christmas boxes and worked as a photograph retoucher. He moved to New York City by 1914, where he was encouraged in his art by the architectural photographer John Wallace Gillies. During the 1920s Amemiya was making ends meet via architectural and commercial photography while gaining artistic recognition: “He had his own views on lenses, focussing, composition, development, toning and printing, and the enlargements which he made from his snapshots displayed ever-incrasing grasp of arrangement, lighting, and artistic sensibility” (Arts & Decoration 17 (Oct. 1922): 411). Amemiya’s paintings of “the misty Hudson in early morning” likewise were admired by art collectors, albeit filtered through a racial lens of Orientalism: “Though the familiar heights above Morningside and Harlem are plainly to be recognized, there is a distinctly oriental slant to the view and the sloop with snowy sails might be drifting about the China sea” (Washington Evening Star 29 Oct. 1922: 48). “It is true,” said Amemiya, “that sometimes when I see landscapes and groups of people I see my own country and my own countrymen, and almost inevitably I give them what you call a Japanese atmosphere. I do not think I am wrong to do so, do you?” 1 photograph in Photo-Miniature. 2 photographs in Shadowland.
Sometimes called Low Point, Chelsea, NY is located north of the present-day Newburgh-Beacon Bridge. Dean’s etching shows the ruins of what had once been a thriving Hudson River industry, using mud from seasonal deposits. We see grass in the foreground, possibly of some marshy variety, and a profusion of foliage in various textures reclaiming the brickworks buildings. At far right, a human figure serves to render the scale. About the Artist: Born Robert Jerome Dean in Chattanooga, TN, this NDG artist was primarily a cartoonist. Having attempted to join the circus as a contortionist, Dean moved with his family to Buffalo and eventually studied at the Student Art League. His first job was drawing turf cartoons for Horse World—Buffalo, then editorial cartoons for the Buffalo Times. In 1905 Dean joined the Atlanta News (a city where he lived for several years). Dean was a prolific, sometimes imaginative illustrator at Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus’s Magazine; while working there he created a hybrid fantasy story-comic strip called The Zotwots that was published between 1908 and 1914. When Harris’s magazine folded the strip ran for a short period in the New York Herald. Like many other cartoons of this period, racial humor and minstrelsy sometimes informed Dean’s series. He then moved to New York City to find work where he could as a writer and illustrator: Collier’s magazine, the New York Journal, Herald, and Telegraph Some of his drawings found their way onto lithographs, wooden jigsaw puzzles, and ceramic plates. He spent his last twenty years living in Dutchess County. 2 more images at FAP.
A single lily stem displays two blossoms, with the promise of a third; their colors and shapes run extravagently in all directions. Holding the lily is a crystal vase with a mesmerizing, flame-like pattern. Through its facets we see the lily’s green but also a range of colors drawn from the surrounding wall or atmospheric light. About the Artist: Born in Norfolk, VA, Frank spent her early years in Wyoming because her father was a sheep rancher. Perhaps hyperbolically, she recalled that “The sheep froze, and Indians raided the town. I remember seeing Indians over in the hills” (citation). Her family moved to New York in 1913, where Frank studied at the Cooper Union, the Arts Students League, and privately with Stuart Davis. She was a founding member of the New York Society of Women Artists (founded 1925). Expressionist. In 1927 she married artist Ralph Mayer, a specialist in painting materials who published The Painter’s Craft. A lot of information on her, some of it biographical. Signs a declaration published in NYT 26 June 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis?) on “the certainty of damage through testing and the imminence of catastrophe through miscalculation. We ask, in the name of our posterity, in the name of the unborn generations and of works yet unborn, that the current tests be stopped, never to be resumed” (p. 1). Her watercolor “Salt” appeared in a 1938 FAP exhibit on Long Island, focused upon farms and rural life; fellow NDG artists Louis Harris, Herman Copen, and Thomas Nagai also appeared. The Brooklyn Museum (1930), 1 work at Index of American Design. 3 more images at FAP.
This painting appears to be a collection of familiar domestic objects: a bowl of fruit and a plant rest upon a deep window sill; another plant is visible outdoors. But is everything in its place? Here, plants on either side of a glass window or glass serving dish point sharply in all directions. Fossil-fueled heat from a radiator is another material connection across the boundaries of inside and outside. About the Artist: Born in Norfolk, VA, Frank spent her early years in Wyoming because her father was a sheep rancher. Perhaps hyperbolically, she recalled that “The sheep froze, and Indians raided the town. I remember seeing Indians over in the hills” (citation). Her family moved to New York in 1913, where Frank studied at the Cooper Union, the Arts Students League, and privately with Stuart Davis. She was a founding member of the New York Society of Women Artists (founded 1925). Expressionist. In 1927 she married artist Ralph Mayer, a specialist in painting materials who published The Painter’s Craft. A lot of information on her, some of it biographical. Signs a declaration published in NYT 26 June 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis?) on “the certainty of damage through testing and the imminence of catastrophe through miscalculation. We ask, in the name of our posterity, in the name of the unborn generations and of works yet unborn, that the current tests be stopped, never to be resumed” (p. 1). Her watercolor “Salt” appeared in a 1938 FAP exhibit on Long Island, focused upon farms and rural life; fellow NDG artists Louis Harris, Herman Copen, and Thomas Nagai also appeared. The Brooklyn Museum (1930), 1 work at Index of American Design. 3 more images at FAP.
Gaige uses just enough visual cues to suggest some depth to his landscape, but its main interest appears to be the play of willow trunks and branches against grass and foliage. The latter, rendered in a limited pallette of colors, nevertheless plays out in many permutations and textures. About the Artist: Born in Candor, NY, Gaige grew up in Binghamton and graduated from the School of Art at Syracuse University. He then moved to New York City where he worked as a painter, a freelance designer, and a teacher at the Parsons School of Design. His own innovations for a line of women’s compacts, cigarette cases, and coin cases for Volupté was recognized at the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition “Useful Objects of American Design Under Ten Dollars” (1940). Along with his design work during the 1930s, Gaige was employed by the Federal Art Project. In 1942 he enlisted in the Army, serving first as a structural draftsman at Fort Dix, NJ, where he was featured in a humorous article on subject of slang between soldiers and their sweethearts:“This sugar report is coming straight from second heaven. You should cop a gander at the taxpayers straggling in. This new bunch of handcuffed volunteers has everything including short pants, battle wagons, moss backs, cruisers, modern guineas and a Hollywood private to snow ‘em under” (Cross). Gaige later became a writer-artist for Yank newspaper, traveling to the Middle East. The probable cause for this shift in direction was the positive reaction to his cartoons about military life, eventually collected into a book entitled Me and the Army. One critic wrote that “Every right page is filled with rough and ready sketches, full of life and keen observation, of all that goes on during the early days of training. Gaige may not be a great artist, but is a great observer of human activity from the mass nudity of medical inspection to the calm dignity of church service. The book is really a letter from a soldier to the folks at home—any soldier to any parents” (Dungen). After the war Gaige lived first in Pennsylvania and then in Miami. 11 images at OpenValley. 4 more images at FAP. Sources Consulted: Christopher Cross, “How to Write to Him in His Own Language” (Albuquerque Journal 18 Oct 1942: 15. H.L. Dungen, “Witty Discourse on Army Life,” Oakland Tribune 20 June 1943: 19.
The identity of this unusual church isn’t clear. Its design and steeple are characteristic of many found throughout New England; at the top of its steeple is a small “onion dome” turret usually found on Russian or Greek Orthodox churches. Jones may have found this subject matter intriguing, along with what appears to be a very old graveyard in the foreground. Lightly etched environmental details—clouds, trees, bushes—surround the central building like a nimbus. About the Artist: Born in Manchester, NH, Jones studied painting at the Cowles Art School in Boston under Ernest Major and Joseph de Camp. His early career involved commercial illustration for the publisher Frank A. Munsey, an indication of that style during this period possibly shown in his whimsical illustrations for a children’s book called Monkey Shines (1904). Among the places where Jones’ work was exhibited include the Salmagundi Club (1907, 1917, 1929), the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco (1915), and the Brooklyn Museum of Art (1930-31). In addition to the etching housed at the NDG, Jones’ other work for the WPA appeared at a rotating exhibition in Patchogue, NY (1936) and a posthumous print exhibition at Keuka College, Penn Yan, NY (1941). From about 1933 to 1940, he taught art at the Stony Brook School for Boys, a Christian co-ed college preparatory school. 12 works at The Athenaeum. 1 work at the Birmingham Museum of Art. 1 more image at FAP.
This enigmatic watercolor is organized around the small figurine at left, perhaps a mythical Japanese fox-spirit called kitsune. Their intelligence and shape-shifting ability renders them an ambiguous omen: perhaps as shapeshifting tricksters, perhaps as spirit messengers. They could have as many as nine tails—suggested here by an additional eight curling cacti—at which time their fur turned white. This would be a very old, wise, and powerful kitsune. Two lotus blossoms in the dish, symbols of purity, render this compact still life to be of profound spiritual importance, and we see waves of fabric rippling around the moment. About the Artist: Born Tokorogo, Japan, Kadowaki immigrated to Seattle, WA in 1909, giving as his profession a tailor for the famous Mitsukoshi department store in Tokyo. He appears to have lived in California shortly after arrival. As of 1917, he was a waiter at an Oyster Bay, NY restaurant; in 1920 he was butler to the son of a US Vice President in Wayne, NJ; in 1930 he was servant to a Murray Hill attorney; in 1940 he was a cook. These occupations all were considered "appropriate" for Japanese immigrants, and yet Kadowaki persisted in his pursuit of art. While in California he took classes at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design, exhibiting there in 1910; while in New York, he took classes at the Art Students League and exhibited at the ACA Gallery and Salons of America. In 1926 he designed a whimsical cockatoo light made of celluloid. After the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor, he was one of seven (along with NDG artist Thomas Nagai) to sign and publish a “Declaration of Japanese-American Artists”: “Let us express here and now our tremendous anxiety for national defense of America; our determination to support it to our utmost as artists and men, and further, to bear arms if necessary to ensure the final victory for the Democratic forces of the world. Whether a Fascist calls himself German, Italian, or Japanese, he is part and parcel of the same plot against all mankind.” Kadowaki became a US citizen in 1953. Source Consulted: Ruth L. Benjamin, “Japanese Painters in America” Parnassus 7.5 (October 1935): 13–15. For helpful suggestions, sincere thanks to Mai Sato.
New Deal Gallery, Genesee Valley Council on the Arts Object #FA18185
Ritz, Abigail (photography) Cooper, Ken (biography)
The familiar phrase “peak color” receives an ecstatic new meaning in Nordell’s transcendentalist vision, where sun illuminates woodland foliage in fiery hues, then doubles them in a reflecting pool. His figurative rendering of the scene edges toward an impressionist composition in leaf-colors; upstate New Yorkers know this moment and this feeling. About the Artist: Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Nordell immigrated to the US when he was seven years old and grew up in “a large family with poor parents” in Westerly, RI (Norwich Bulletin 7 April 1910: 6). He nevertheless was able to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, where his talents soon were recognized and led to a productive career, both as a landscape painter and sought-after portraitist. Nordell studied at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, under Edmund C. Tarbell; the Art Students League under George Bridgman and Frank DuMond; and the Académie Julian, Paris, under Jean-Paul Laurens. In 1910 he was awarded the James William Paige Traveling Scholarship for study in Europe. He married Emma Alice Parker, an accomplished painter in her own right, in 1912. Nordell’s art was exhibited widely, at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco; the Corcoran Gallery; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; and many others. Nordell appears to have had a special affinity for Western New York, often showing his work at Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Gallery and Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery; beginning in the late 1920s he spent summers at Chautauqua painting landscapes. Later he lived not far from Lake Erie in Westfield, NY. 2 works at Mead Art Museum. 2 works at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Source Consulted: Michael Preston Worley, “Carl Nordell,” askART