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William Meyerowitz, N.A. (1887-1981). Kaleidoscope. browse these categories for related items... Directory: Fine Art: Paintings: Oil: N. America: American: Pre 1950: item # 915107 Please refer to our stock # 2469 when inquiring.
Raymond Agler Fine Arts 16 Pleasant Street Gloucester, Massachusetts 01930 978-281-5048 Guest Book Price on request |
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| Oil on canvas, 50.25 x 36.75 inches, 56.50 x 42.50 including hand-carved white gold frame, signed "Wm. Meyerowitz" lower right. Exhibition/Sale label verso: "William Meyerowitz/54 W. 74th St./N.Y./Kaleidoscope/oil/Buyer: Miss Miriam Drevitch/49 W. 12th St. N.Y." Born in the Ukraine, Meyerowitz was part of the great diaspora of Russian Jewish immigrants who came to America in the early years of the 20th century. Though apprenticed to a sign painter as a youth, all of his formal art training took place in this country, beginning in New York at the National Academy of Design, which included instruction in painting with William Merritt Chase. He supported himself during his student days by singing in the Metropolitan Opera Chorus and by utilizing his drawing talent at an architectural firm. Meyerowitz was a founding member of the People's Art Guild in 1917, an artists' co-op venture which sponsored exhibitions in various New York settlement houses. In the course of this work, he met Theresa Bernstein, artist daughter of a well-to-do Philadelphia family. They were married in 1919 and became a truly dynamic duo, painting together until parted by William's death in 1981. Bernstein, a member of the Philadelphia Ten, lived on until 2002, passing away at the age of 112. They divided their lives between New York City and, beginning c. 1919, the Cape Ann fishing community of Gloucester, Massachusetts, a magnet for artists such as Hassam, Glackens, Sloan, Hopper, Twachtman, Hartley and Avery. The women's contingent was led by Cecilia Beaux and included Jane Peterson, Margaret Fitzhugh Browne, Alice Schille, Fern Coppedge and Anna Hyatt Huntington. William and Theresa were both active in New York and Philadelphia art circles also. Meyerowitz was a member of the Society of Independent Artists, where, about 1930, he first encountered Marcel Duchamps, creator of "Nude Descending a Staircase", the sensation of the 1913 Armory Show. The two became fast friends and chess partners over many years. The work of Duchamps and the pictorial dynamics of movement revealed by the work of the chronophotographers resonates in "Kaleidoscope." The foreground figures "progress" from right to left and are echoed as diminishing ghost-images rising to upper center. The artist's fascination with horses from an early age is recounted in Bernstein's biography of her husband. She relates how, as a boy, he enjoyed taking the neighbors' work horses to bathe in the Dnieper River and once was bitten by a skittish animal he had hoped to pat on the nose. Undeterred, "within a couple of days, he was back in the marketplace, sketching the horses." "Kaleidoscope" is perhaps the artist's ultimate evocation of the equine spirit. As Bernstein noted: "Every aspect of the horse fascinated him. He caught them galloping, trotting and cantering...into realms of fantasy, levitating the animals into the empyrean atmosphere, in which they danced like musical notes from the harp." It would seem that "Kaleidoscope" is likely the specific picture that inspired Bernstein's words. Working in both realist and abstract camps, and sometimes a mixture of both, now called "cubo-realist", Meyerowitz left us with a unique body of paintings and prints, his very personal vision. This important painting is representative of his finest work. | ||
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