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Photo Credit: John Schweikert

Artist
Title

Nine Workmen

Date
1942-1945
Century
20th century
Medium & Support
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Canvas: 43 1/4 x 58 1/8 in. , Frame: 53 1/2 x 68 3/8 in.
Style
Social Realism
Object Type
Paintings
Credit Line
Museum purchase
Accession Number
1985.04.2.21
Copyright
In Copyright, Rights Holder(s) Unlocatable or Unidentifiable
© Estate of James Ormsbee Chapin
ON VIEW
Description

Nine workmen of various ages and races. Some holding tools. Chapin used selective focus, older man up front and men in back are softer that the five central figures.

Label History

Chapin obtained solid artistic training at The Cooper Union and The Art Students League of New York, followed by two years at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. In 1924 he moved to rural New Jersey, where he recorded the life of local people in a straightforward style that predated the American Scene imagery of the 1930s. Nine Workmen exemplifies the qualities that premier Regionalist painter Grant Wood afforded to Chapin’s paintings in a 1940 exhibition catalogue published by the Associated American Artists as “among the best things in American art, strong and solid as boulders. They were full of the pain and bleakness of a frugal existence of the land, yet possessed a subtle, melancholy beauty of their own.”

Exhibition Title: Asheville Art Museum: An Introduction to the Collection
Label Date: 2021
Type: Catalogue Entry
Written by: Cindy Buckner

Exhibition List
This object was included in the following exhibitions:

Keywords

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