Important 1938 Gladys Rockmore Davis “The Letter” Oil Canvas Exhibited Ex-Museum

Description: About this work: “The Letter, 1938” by Gladys Rockmore Davis (American, 1901-1967) One of Davis’s finest works, this painting of a young seated woman combines the mundane with the mysterious. Beyond the satisfying brushwork, color, and composition, the viewer is drawn to the illusive contents of the letter that rests on the table, which envelops the work in an aura of intrigue. Davis, who began her career as a commercial artist, became one of the most successful women painters in America in the 1930s and 40s (one critic called her “the ten-year wonder of United States art“). Her beloved paintings of women and children were displayed at numerous important institutions across the US, including the Whitney, Metropolitan, PAFA, Art Institute of Chicago, etc. This work is oil on canvas and is signed with the artist’s initials in the lower right. It is housed in a beautiful gilded frame and retains labels from Janet Marqusee Fine Arts Ltd. and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts on the reverse. Size: 25 inches tall by 30 inches wide (painting) 33.25 inches tall by 38.25 inches wide by 3 inches deep (frame) Exhibited: Pennsylvania, Carnegie Institute, Survey of American Painting, October 24-December 15, 1940 (catalog no. 277); Texas, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 200 Years of American Painting, October 5-November 4, 1946 (catalog no. 27) Literature: Magazine of Art, Volume 33, January 1940 (illustrated frontispiece); American Artists Group, Gladys Rockmore Davis, 1945 (illustrated); Robert Henkes, American Women Painters of the 1930s and 1940s, 1991, pp. 180-181 Provenance: Frank K.M. Rehn Galleries, New York; Midtown Galleries, New York; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Texas; Janet Marqusee Fine Arts Ltd, New York; Private collection; Acquired from the above About the artist: An artist who succeeded in both commercial and fine arts, Gladys Rockmore Davis gave up a career in advertising art to devote herself to creative painting. Her work in pastels ranks with her oils, and her chief subjects are children, nudes and still-lifes. She also painted ballet dancers, vignettes of liberated Paris, and scenes of Spain. Born in New York City, on May 11, 1901, the daughter of David William Rockmore and Jeanette (Richman) Rockmore, Gladys Davis lived in New York until she was nine years old when her father, a lawyer and metallurgist, moved the family to Canada. She and her brother spent the next five years getting used to new schools as the family moved from place to place. The Rockmores eventually settled in San Francisco where Gladys attended the Girls' High School. Miss Davis tells about her early background in an article, "My Desire to Paint", which appeared in the January 1940 issue of Magazine of Art, saying, "I was completely absorbed with the business of drawing from the first minute I was able to hold a pencil. I can remember as a child being intensely interested in drawing almost to the exclusion of everything else. That interest has continued uninterruptedly." Although neither of her parents had any artistic inclinations, they encouraged her and sent her to the California School of Fine Arts. At the age of sixteen, she entered the Art Institute of Chicago where she studied with John Norton and George Bellows. She speaks affectionately of Norton who "taught me to look, to see, really to use my eyes. He showed me the vast difference between the actual distortion of reality and the 'pretty' distortion of the average point of view." She praised the Institute, not only for its teaching, but also for having a museum where the students could compare their work with the works of masters. "Great paintings put us in our places," she said. After graduation from the Art Institute in 1920, she began her career as a commercial artist and worked in the advertising and fashion fields for eleven years. She feels this was an important phase of her career because it was then that she learned judgment, discipline and facility. In 1925, she married Floyd MacMillan Davis, well-known illustrator, and combined painting with caring for her children, Noel and Deborah. The Davises went to Europe in 1932. While in France, Mrs. Davis visited Renoir's home and studio and studied his paintings. After touring the continent the family settled in Cannes, France, where Mrs. Davis started to paint as a creative artist. The transition was not so noticeable from day to day, but on her return to the United States in 1933, she found she had completely lost her flair for commercial work. Abandoning her former methods, she studied at the Art Students League in New York and with George Grosz for a year; then she started on her own as an artist. Recognition came soon. She won the William R. French Gold Medal at the Chicago Institute of Art in 1937 and was recommended for the 1938 purchase prize by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts at Richmond, Virginia. In 1939 she received honorable mention from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and third honorable mention from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York bought her August Afternoon in 1940. This was followed by a number of prizes in museums throughout the country, and in 1941 she gave her first one-man show at the Rehn Gallery in New York City. After two additional one-man shows at the Midtown Gallery in New York an art critic called Gladys Rockmore Davis "the ten-year wonder of United States art". Mrs. Davis always set out to paint the things with which she was familiar. Her two children, Noel and Deborah, posed for many paintings from their babyhood through their youth. Among her best-known works are Noel with Violin, Emma, Girl Braiding Her Hair, Letter, and Carousel. Her work was described by a critic of the Art Digest (May 1, 1943) as that of "one of our strongest women artists, who is not so much concerned with fantasy as she is with painting a good solid, professional picture". At the Metropolitan Opera House in 1944, Mrs. Davis made many intimate sketches of the ballet from backstage and other studies in the dressing rooms. In painting the ballet scenes, she captured the drama of contrasts resulting from the intense lighting on the stage and darkness of the wings where the dancers waited their entrances. In the dressing rooms she sketched the ballerinas while they made their changes. She selected scenes from Petrouchka, Swan Lake, Les Sylphides, Giselle and Aleko. During World War II, her ballet sketches were exhibited in Bonwit Teller store windows while she worked inside sketching ballerinas and giving her pictures away for the purchase of $100 war bonds. She received a citation from the Government in 1945 in recognition of this service. Mrs. Davis and her husband were commissioned by Life magazine to paint liberated Paris in 1944 and 1945. Floyd Davis concentrated on the wartime city with American soldiers, while she painted the familiar and nostalgic scenes. Reviewing the show, which was exhibited in the foyer of the Time-Life Building in 1945, a critic from the New York World-Telegram commented, "This was an uncertain, frightened city Gladys Davis was painting. Only the children seemed happy, well nourished, at ease. The merry-go-rounds, the Luxembourg gardens, the puppet shows, are quite as they have always been. Everything else had a furtive, unreal look about it in those uncertain days before the Rhine was crossed". Some of the Parisian scenes painted by Mrs. Davis were Chez Suzy, Bookstalls, Joan of Arc Statue and Flower Stalls. Mrs. Davis was one of the artists participating in the first art show sponsored by the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1945; in the same year she won the Pepsi-Cola Portrait of America Show popular prize. She was represented in the Portraits, Inc., in 1947 of Family Life in the United States during the past hundred years with her paintings of the children of Mr. and Mrs. John P. Marquand. Some art lovers compare her portraits of children to those by Mary Cassatt, the American Impressionist painter of a previous generation. Condition: Very good overall condition. Wax relined on later stretcher. Scattered minor retouch. Difficult to discern any additional conservation under old varnish layer. Frame with wear and some cracking to decorate elements. It is ready to be displayed and enjoyed! This work will be carefully packed and shipped with insurance and signature confirmation. Free local pick up is also available. International buyers - please note I cannot lower the declared value of the package for customs. I frequently receive messages from people after I sell an item, asking if it is definitely gone. If something catches your eye, don't hesitate to inquire before it is sold! Feel free to ask any questions.

Price: 7500 USD

Location: Morrisville, Pennsylvania

End Time: 2024-09-26T21:35:30.000Z

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