"Stag at Sharkey's," George Bellows, 1909.

Bellows (1882-1925) was an acclaimed Realist artist who was part of the Ashcan School, which sought to capture scenes of everyday life in New York, especially that of the lower and poorer classes. He had Socialist and Anarchist leanings, but also was a fervent supporter of the US's entry in WWI. While some on the left viewed him with suspicion, on the right he created controversy with his anticensorhip views, and his opposition to the persecution of dissenters and conscientious objectors.

When told he had no business depicting the war, because he wasn't there, he shot back, "I had no idea Leonardo da Vinci had a ticket to the Last Supper!"

Here we have one of his Aschan paintings, with a boxing match in full swing. Evidently this is at a private boxing club; the term "stag" refers to a contender who's given a temporary membership so he can take part in a bout. He chose a low perspective to imitate that of someone watching from the crowd. He also confessed he knew nothing of boxing, saying, "I'm just painting two men trying to kill each other."

From the Cleveland Museum of Art.

"Rosy Light," Oscar Bluemner, 1927.

Oscar Florianus Bluemner (1867-1938) was a Prussian-born but thoroughly American artist. Moving to Chicago when he was 26, just in time for the world's fair, he tried to work as an architect. Moving to New York, his design for a courthouse in the Bronx was plagiarized, ultimately leading to an embezzlement/cronyism scandal that took down a local politican.

After meeting photographer Alfred Stieglitz, Bluemner decided to focus on painting. Sadly, much of his career was hounded by poor sales, and in the 30s he created works for the Federal Arts Project. He began to break into success in 1935 but his wife's death, plus a long battle with depression, led to his death by suicide in 1938.

Now he is credited as a pivotal figure in the development of American modernism, and over a thousand of his works are held by Stetson University in Florida.

From the RISD Museum in Providence, RI.

"Sunday Afternoon in the Country," Florine Stettheimer, 1917.

Stettheimer (1871-1944) was a Modernist painter and theatrical designer, as well as a pioneering feminist, poet, and salonniere.

While at first glance this seems rather mundane, the colors are strange; check out the red tree. Some of the characters seem to be doing bizarre, random things, and some appear to be sitting in upholstered armchairs.

In reality, this is her memory of a picnic she held; in the upper right, hardly visible, she paints herself working at her easel. In the lower left, photographer Edward Steichen points his camera at Dada founder Marcel Duchamp. leaning on a table, while Ettie Stettheimer (the artist's sister) stands behind him in the red coat. Other real-life people are depicted, but in a strange style reminiscent of Chagall.

Stettheimer refused to identify with any group or school; her work is Modernist by default for the time she worked in and her style. Not taken seriously in her liftetime, her work was donated to museums and rediscovered in the 1990s, and now she is hailed as a great American artist.

From the Cleveland Museum of Art.

"Rum Row," Frederick Judd Waugh, 1922.

This is a fairly off-the-beaten-track painting for Waugh (1861-1940), who was known mostly as a marine painter. His seascapes are still admired today.

The son of portraitist Samuel Waugh, he had the best education and lives mostly abroad, painting seascapes. He returned to the US in 1908 where he went from New Jersey to Maine to Provincetown, MA. He also did illustration work for periodicals, and was hired by the Navy to design camouflage for ships.

Most interestingly, he published a number of fairy tales with American settings. He was deeply interested in folklore and the supernatural, and sought to create a New World fairy tradition for young readers.

But today we have some lovely irises in empty old rum bottles. These probably were considered trash in his day....now they're valued collectibles!

Happy Flower Friday!

"Portrait of Dora Wheeler," William Merritt Chase, 1882-3.

Chase (1849-1916) was one of the most notable American Impressionists. A renowned portraitist, he was also a versatile artist working in many media, including watercolor & engraving, & was also a prominent teacher. He was willing to accept female students at a time when that was unheard of, & Wheeler was one of his first.

Wheeler (1856-1940) was the daughter of Candace Wheeler (1827-1923) who is regarded as the mother of interior design, & one of America's first women designer of interiors & textiles, & a supporter of craftswomen & design reform. Dora studied art under Chase & then joined her mother's design firm. (Her father was a businessman who was very progressive & encouraged his wife & daughter in their careers.) Dora became known as a portraitist, muralist, textile designer & illustrator, although sadly her most prominent mural was destroyed in a fire & little of her textile work has survived. Still, he was a prominent women of the arts, & both she & her mother were respected designers and entrepeneurs.

From the Cleveland Museum of Art.

"Untitled (Moon Over a Harbor)," Edward Mitchell Bannister, c. 1868.

Bannister (1828-1901) was a Canadian-born Black artist who painted mostly in what is known as the American Barbizon school, an offshoot of the French Barbizon school of art, which specialized in simple scenes painted directly from nature. While American Barbizon artists usually focused on rural and farm scenes, but other settings, like this harbor, were used as well.

Bannister received national attention when he won first place in painting at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. He was also an activist, a vocal abolitionist and social justice crusader. He was a prominent figure in Boston's Black artistic community.

Sadly, during his life his artistic style fell from favor, and after his death he was largely forgotten until the late 1960s, when his work was rediscovered by researchers of Black American history. Now he's regarded as a great Canadian-American original.

From the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

In 1994, the @whitneymuseum held a 50-year retrospective of the work of #RichardAvedon. We review the book that remains from that exhibition that documented it.

https://wp.me/P23AlC-gu

Manchester Journal: SVAC unveils digitized archive of permanent collection. “Southern Vermont Arts Center (SVAC) recently announced the launch of a digitized archive of its Permanent Collection, making a wide range of 20th-century American art accessible to the public for the first time in over a decade. … The database contains over 700+ works of art and objects collected over time. […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/06/manchester-journal-svac-unveils-digitized-archive-of-permanent-collection/

"Zebra Family," Morris Hirshfield, 1942.

Born in Poland, Hirshfield (1872-1946) emigrated to the U.S. in 1890 and from then until his 60s he worked in the garment industry, including owning businesses that made women's coats and slippers. After his retirement in 1935, he took up painting.

Completely self-taught, his paintings (primarily of animals and women) were rich with pattern, perhaps a holdover from his work in the garment industry. These zebras, for instance, could almost be crewel embroidery, especially the trees in the background.

He had some fame in his lifetime, including a show at the Museum of Modern Art...but it got bad press and the MoMA's director was demoted as a result. Still, now he's regarded as one of the great American outsider artists.

From a private collection.

The first photo is James Van Der Zee, an American photographer of the Harlem Renaissance.

In my eyes, he documented Black Excellence, and portrayed his community in their best moments, in their best light, and revealed not only the truth of their strength and beauty, but also shined light on their talents and aspirations.

"Irises," Sophia Crownfield, early 20th century.

Not much info is available about Crownfield, but I want to know more. She was born here in Baltimore in 1862 and seems to have received some artistic education here. In the 1880s she moved to New York where she became a highly successful designer of patterns for silk and wallpaper.

She wasn't just a dilettante, she supported herself and her sister with her design work, some of which would be in some of the best silk dresses of the period. She died in her New York home in 1929, at the age of 67.

Design needs to be appreciated more! Design is art!

"Capri," Joseph Stella, c. 1926-29.

Most famous for his views of the Brooklyn Bridge, Stella (1877-1946) also did a number of nature paintings, but always with a strong Modernist bent.

The tree at center is very angular and reminds me somewhat of a menorah. Note how, on the left, the branches match up almost perfectly with the edge of the mountain in the background. The two bushes flanking it are impossibly perfectly conical. The background, with the mountains and boats, is the only part that's halfway naturalistic.

It's an interesting image, a mixture of nature and Modernism that doesn't thrill me but I acknowledge its quality. Ain't my thing, but maybe it's yours.

From a private collection.

"Earth Warming," Marsden Hartley, 1932.

Hartley (1877-1943) was America's preeminent Modernist painter in the first part of the 20th century. His technique borrowed from Cubism but he was generally very representational in his work, even if sometimes it seemed abstract.

Here we have the rugged landscape in Mexico, where Hartley went to work and study for a year after receiving a Guggenheim fellowship in 1931.

From the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL

"Brooklyn Bridge," Joseph Stella, 1919-20.

Stella (1877-1946) was born in Italy but came to the US in 1869 to study medicine, but soon abandoned that and embraced art. He began as a figural, realist painter, doing a lot of illustration work, but later, while traveling in Europe, embraced Modernism and Futurism.

Returning to the US in 1911, he plunged into the avant-garde modern art world, and became quite the mover and shaker. This canvas here is the first of a number of paintings he did of the Brooklyn Bridge, which he used as a symbol of progress. In the 30s he progressed with his style, going from Futurism to Precisionism to Abstract to Surrealist to the point that he belonged to no school in particular. In the late 30s and 40s, sadly, his career declined and he got little notice. But his earlier work still is praised as trailblazing classics.

From the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.

"Votes for Women," Bertha Margaret Boyé, 1911.

There's not much information about Boyé (1883-1930) except that she was a California native who entered this as part of a competition to design a poster to help for the campaign for women's suffrage in California. The Art Nouveau/Arts and Crafts style is lovely, and that's the Golden Gate behind her, so it makes it a uniquely Californian image. And California gave women the vote in 1911, so the poster was successful.

This appears to be her only notable work; she died at the age of 47 in Europe, having gone there to continue her studies.

From the Arthur & Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Cambridge, MA.

"A Gorge in the Mountains (Kauterskill Clove)," Sanford Robinson Gifford, 1862.

Gifford (1823-1880) was a leader of the second generation of the Hudson River School, and also a leading practitioner of the Luminism style, which focused on soft light effects.

Although he traveled extensively to find great landscapes to paint, his most effective work was often done close to his New York home, such as this picture of a real gorge in the Catskills (although it's really called Kaaterskill Clove...). In later years he considered this one of his "chief pictures."

Kaaterskill Clove was, and is, popular with hikers and artists, and even in the 19th century it was quite a tourist spot, with the town of Palenville trying to pass itself off as the home of Rip van Winkle!

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

"Stone City, Iowa," Grant Wood, 1930.

Wood (1891-1942) was THE great American Regionalist painter. He's best known for "American Gothic" but so much else he did is worth looking at.

This painting of an idyllic village is actually a depiction of a town in transition. Stone City had been founded as a company town for a limestone quarry, but the limestone business declined with the rise of Portland cement, so the town shrank and shifted into agriculture. This is a fairly idealized scene showing the town now in harmony with its environment, and a place where Wood established an art colony for a couple of years.

Looks like the perfect landscape for an autumn drive...

From the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE.

"Untitled (Man and Woman)," Bill Traylor, 1939-42.

Traylor (c.1853 - 1949) is one of America's great outsider artists. A poor black sharecropper, he didn't begin making art until he was 85 years old and living on the streets of Montgomery, AL. A young white artist noted the drawings he made and supplied him with paint and other materials. He had one exhibition, in 1940, but nothing sold, but at least it brought enough notice for him to be taken off the streets and living with family.

Now he is seen as a major self-taught artist, with some critics claiming they see all sorts of anti-Jim Crow symbolism in his works.

From the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

(1/2) John Vanderlyn - Panoramic View of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles (1819). At the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a rainy Sunday and not one of the ones you'd be able to get on a postcard ;)

First batch with the new X-T5. How I've missed shooting through a viewfinder.