Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art at the Jewish Museum, New York

Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art 

Jewish Museum, New York City
October 18, 2019 - February 9, 2020

Reviewed by Ed Voves
Original Photography by Anne Lloyd

The walls of the special exhibition gallery at the Jewish Museum in New York City are currently hung with art works by many of the greatest American painters of the first half of the twentieth century. Major works by Charles Sheeler and John Marin are featured in the distinguished company of Arthur Dove, Ben Shahn and Jacob Lawrence. Displayed with these masterpieces of Modernism are equally extraordinary works of American folk art. 

                                                    
                                                       Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)                                               Gallery view of the Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art exhibition

Strolling through the exhibition, Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art, you will be greeted by the improbable company of an iron horse weather vane, a "key and saw" trade sign, one of the earliest American portraits, painted by the "Gansevoort Limner" around 1735, and other rare specimens of Americana. I was especially impressed by the hen pheasant weathervane, likely made in New England around 1875. This wondrous creature  seemed about to take flight in the exhibition gallery right before my eyes.

      Anne Lloyd, Photo 2019  

Unknown Artist, Hen Pheasant Weathervane, ca. 1875

These enchanting, hand-crafted objects were not works of "art" according to the tastes and definitions of the 1920's and 1930's when they were first featured at a trend-setting New York City gallery. Nor would you expect them to have been displayed in close proximity to paintings by Stuart Davis. Yet, on second thought, Davis struggled for acceptance during those years, so this gallery owner, who displayed America's folk art and modern art, was indeed a visionary.

The Gansevoort Limner (possibly Pieter Vanderlyn), Miss Van Alen, ca. 1735

Stuart Davis, Little Giant Still Life, 1950

The most notable feature of the Jewish Museum exhibition, however, is not the abundance or variety of major art works. Rather, it is the palpable sense of "presence" of the American businesswomen who bought, sold and treasured these talismans of American creative genius. Edith Gregor Halpert, owner of the Downtown Gallery in Greenwich Village from the 1920's to 1970, died a half century ago but she is very much a spiritual force at the Jewish Museum.

There is much more, however, than the resonance of Halpert's extraordinary life and career to experience at the Jewish Museum. Over 100 works of art are on view, including several sensational paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe. In the Patio, IX, a virtually abstract work by O'Keefe, was one of the favorite paintings of Halpert's personal collection. 

                                                   

                                                      Anne Lloyd, Photo 2019                                                View of the Edith Halpert exhibit, showing Georgia O’Keeffe's In the Patio, IX, 1950

With three weeks left to go, this intelligent, brilliantly curated - and long-overdue -  exhibition is a "must see" retrospective of Halpert and her era. 

Halpert was one of the first to grasp the deep links between the everyday artifacts and memorabilia of early America and sophisticated modern art. Contemporary museum practice places seemingly unrelated works of art, side-by-side, to promote "dialogue." Halpert, contrasting a flower-decorated baptismal certificate, created around 1805, with cutting-edge twentieth century paintings, pioneered that concept decades ago.

                                                    Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)                                                         Birth & baptismal certificate, attributed to Joseph Lochbaum, ca. 1805,                                                  and Georgia O’Keeffe's Poppies, 1950

Edith Halpert (1900-1970) is not a name most Americans - even art lovers - will recognize. The exhibition at the Jewish Museum will hopefully make her contribution better known.  Halpert championed American art and artists at a time when the eyes of the American art world were chiefly focused on the avant garde in Europe.

                                                Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)                                        
                    Samuel Halpert's Portrait of Edith Gregor Halpert,1928                 

Edith Halpert was born in Odessa, Russia, emigrating with her family to the U.S. to escape the anti-Jewish pogroms of Tsarist Russia. Halpert's life-story is a classic illustration of the contributions of immigrants to the American Story, especially her pivotal role as a champion of art created in the U.S.

Halpert opened the Downtown Gallery in 1926, in partnership with her friend, Berthe Kroll Goldsmith. Initially called Our Gallery, the name was changed a year later. With so much of the New York art scene situated in midtown Manhattan, Halpert and Goldsmith were swimming against the tide in more ways than one. The Downtown Gallery, from its start, was dedicated to American artists, both living and deceased exemplars of the culture of the United States.

The Downtown Gallery, ca. 1939, photo from the New York City Municipal Archives 

The Downtown Gallery was a pokey little place, located at 113 West 13th Street in the "Village." It was a very American-style, "do-it-yourself"  enterprise. 

As noted earlier, Halpert had plenty of business smarts. She started working at age sixteen, with remarkable success in the marketing department at Macy's, as an efficiency expert for several New York garment firms and then at S.W. Straus Bank, where she was appointed to the firm's board of directors.

This sensational string of achievements all took place before Halpert was twenty-five years old. However, she had nurtured a love of art since childhood, taking art lessons as a young teen. She married an artist, Samuel Halpert, who strongly encouraged her to focus on art at the expense of her business career. 

Against all expectation, given her dazzling rise in corporate America, Halpert took the plunge into the risky world of fine art sales. From the start, her insight into creative talent was astute, "on-target." Indeed, it might appear that Halpert marketed safe, conventional artists. When we see works by Charles Sheeler and Stuart Davis today, it is easy to forget the revolutionary aspects of their work during the early years of the Downtown Gallery.

                                                   Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)                                                       Gallery view of the Edith Halpert & the Rise of American Art exhibition,                                           showing Charles Sheeler's Americana, 1931

Samuel Halpert died in 1930 and Edith Halpert bought-out her partner, Berthe Goldsmith, in 1935. Except for her beloved dachsund assistant, Adam, Halpert was now the sole guiding force of her enterprise. This enabled her to continue to focus on American art and artists.

Despite her independent status, Edith Halpert, remained a team player. In 1931, she somehow found room in the same small building to open the American Folk Art Gallery, collaborating with Holger Cahill. Only a few short years later, Cahill was to play a major role in American cultural history as the head of the Federal Art Project during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

Halpert supported and marketed major, but struggling, artists during the decade of the Great Depression. One of Halpert's major clients was Abby Rockefeller. Halpert used her "in" with Mrs. Rockefeller to secure commissions for Charles Sheeler at Colonial Williamsburg, under construction during the 1930's with financial support from the Rockefeller family.

Halpert also mentored emerging talent. She dedicated considerable effort - and belief - in championing African American artists, decades before it became a fashionable social-justice cause. 

Jacob Lawrence, The Music Lesson, 1943

Horace Pippin, Sunday Morning Breakfast, 1943 

Both the modernist style of Jacob Lawrence and the folk-art conventions of the paintings by Horace Pippin won Halpert's support, thus validating the premise of her marketing strategy, but more importantly of her social conscience.

“Our gallery has no special prejudice for any school," Halpert declared. "Its selection is directed by what’s enduring—not by what is in vogue.”

Halpert's eye for talent enabled her to judge artists without regard to "race, creed or color" long before that became a socially-correct phrase. For Halpert, it was a call to action and in 1941, she organized a major exhibition, American Negro Art, 19th and 20th Centuries. Held at the Downtown Gallery, this was the first show devoted to African-American art at a commercial gallery. Halpert donated funds raised by the exhibit to the Negro Art Fund.

It is noteworthy, however, that there are few masterpieces by post-World War II artists on view in the Jewish Museum exhibition. Halpert, like other great owners such as Alfred Stieglitz and Ambrose Vollard,  pioneered a revolution in the arts but, later in life, experienced difficulty in making the transition to the ongoing, ever-changing scenario of Modernism. Halpert certainly understood and appreciated abstract art but her focus as a gallery owner remained rooted in the art of 1920's and 30's

The remarkable 1952 photo of Halpert, taken by Life Magazine's Louis Faurer, shows her in the foreground like a commanding general. A group of "proteges," who look more like loyal retainers, maintain a discreet interval behind her. None of the artists - Charles Oscar, Robert Knipschild, Jonah Kinigstein, Wallace Reiss, Carroll Cloar, and Herbert Katzman - are "household" names today.

Louis Faurer, for Life Magazine, Edith Halpert at the Downtown Gallery, 1952

Halpert did plan her moves on the art scene like a bold commander. In 1927, with tactical flair, she launched an annual sale of modestly priced prints to entice new collectors into the art market. The print sales were held in December, for those in the gift-giving mode. The works of major print makers, Edward Hopper and Thomas Hart Benton, were featured along with talented, but underappreciated figures like Louis Lozowick and Wanda Gag.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)

 Thomas Hart Benton's Going West (Express Train), 1934

It says a great deal about Edith Halpert's vision of American art and American society that one of the artists she did make into a famous name was Edward Hicks (1780–1849). The Pennsylvania Quaker had painted the now universally acclaimed Peaceable Kingdom series during the early decades of the nineteenth century. Sixty-two versions of Peaceable Kingdom are known to exist today.

Almost every major American art museum has a Hicks Peaceable Kingdom in its collection. The example below, from the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, was a gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, 3rd. It was one of several versions of Peaceable Kingdom which Halpert listed on her inventory at the Downtown Gallery.

Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom, ca.1846

What makes this otherwise standard gallery transaction worthy of note? Halpert was the first person in the American art world to realize the "enduring value" of Hicks and his now iconic paintings. In December 1931, she presented an exhibition entitled American Ancestors which prominently displayed Peaceable Kingdom. Prior to this landmark exhibition, Hicks was virtually unknown. 

Halpert had been introduced to American folk art by the great Polish-born sculptor, Elie Nadelman, who had built up a private collection of these American "primitives." Several of Nadelman's own works are on view in the Jewish Museum exhibition, which is only fitting as Halpert featured his sculptures at the Downtown Gallery.

                                                 Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)                                              Gallery view of the Edith Halpert exhibit, showing Elie Nadelman's Circus Performer, 1920–25 (left) and John Storrs' Study in Architectural Forms, 1927

If Halpert played a pivotal role in establishing the reputation of Edward Hicks and supporting Elie Nadelman, she performed similar acts of recognition for other artists as well. African-American artists, American women artists, American print-makers - all received powerful support from Edith Halpert at the Downtown Gallery.

Halpert died in 1970. Her niece tried unavailingly to continue operating the Downtown Galley.. In 1973, almost a half-century after it opened, the Downtown Gallery (by then relocated to midtown Manhattan) closed its doors forever.

A moving - and entirely accurate testimonial for Edith Halpert was delivered by sculptor, William Zorach:

Edith Halpert was always full of ideas and projects. She didn’t have to depend on anyone. She did not follow in the footsteps of others; she did not take the easy way of promoting and selling European art where the path was clear and well trodden. She set out to promote American art because she believed in it and realized that if this country was ever to have an American art it had to come out of American artists.... This she made her goal and she has stuck to it with a single-minded devotion. American art owes her a great debt. 


***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 
Original photos, copyright of Anne Lloyd, all rights reserved                                                                                          
Images courtesy of the  Jewish Museum, New York City 

Introductory Image:

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Gallery view of Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art, showing Henry Leach's Liberty weathervane pattern, 1879. Shelburne Museum, Vermont, museum purchase, acquired from Edith Halpert, the Downtown Gallery

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Gallery view of the Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art exhibition, Jewish Museum, New York City

The Gansevoort Limner (Possibly Pieter Vanderlyn, ca. 1687 - 1778) Miss Van Alen, cs. 1735,  Oil on canvas: 79.2 x 66.4 cm (31 3/16 x 26 1/8 in.) National Gallery of Art. Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

Stuart Davis, Little Giant Still Life, 1950. Oil on canvas. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, John Barton Payne Fund Artwork © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photograph by Katherine Wetzel.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)  View of the Edith Halpert exhibition, showing Georgia O’Keeffe's In the Patio, IX, 1950.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)  Birth & baptismal certificate of Jacob Bosshaar, attributed to Joseph Lochbaum, ca. 1805 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, promised gift of Joan and Victor Johnson) and Georgia O’Keeffe's Poppies, 1950. (Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin, gift of Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley)

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Samuel Halpert's Portrait of Edith Gregor Halpert, 1928. (Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, gift of Joseph M. Erdelac)

The Downtown Gallery at 113 West 13th Street, Greenwich Village, ca. 1939. Photo from the New York City Municipal Archives. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)  Gallery view of the Edith Halpert & the Rise of American Art exhibition, showing Charles Sheeler's Americana, 1931. (Metropolitan Museum of Art,  Edith & Milton Lowenthal Collection, bequest of Edith Abrahamson Lowenthal)

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2001) The Music Lesson, 1943, from The Harlem Series. Gouache on paper New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, gift of the Association for the Arts of the New Jersey State Museum

Horace Pippin (1888-1946) Sunday Morning Breakfast, 1943. Oil on fabric Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri, museum funds; Friends Fund; bequest of Marie Setz Hertslet, museum purchase, Eliza McMillan Trust, and gift of Mrs. Carll Tucker, by exchange. 

Louis Faurer, (Life Magazine) Edith Halpert at the Downtown Gallery, 1952. Photograph © Estate of Louis Faurer.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)  Thomas Hart Benton's Going West (Express Train), 1934. (New York Public Library)

Attributed to Edward Hicks (1780-1849), Peaceable Kingdom, ca.1846  Oil on canvas. De Young/Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, 3rd.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Gallery view of the Edith Halpert exhibition, showing, at left, Elie Nadelman 's Circus Performer, 1920–25 (Colby Museum of Art)  Colby College, Waterville, Maine) and John Storrs' Study in Architectural Forms (Forms in Space), 1927,(Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas

Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life

Philadelphia Museum of Art

October 27, 2015 - January 10, 2016

Reviewed by Ed Voves

There are two basic ways to interpret the brilliant new exhibit on American still life painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Audubon to Warhol. 

The first and most obvious way is to simply enjoy the beauty and virtuosity of the vast array of still lifes in the Philadelphia exhibit. Some of the artists involved may not be familiar names. The art works that have been put on display, however, are first class from start to finish.

The second approach entails abandoning the idea that still life painting is a sideshow to the "center stage" display of portrait, landscape and abstract painting. Still life art, as is evident in Audubon to Warhol, is not "Sunday painting." The skill and proficiency of these works is often astonishing and their implications for American life and society are equally profound.

Anne Lloyd, Gallery View of the Audubon to Warhol Exhibition, 2015

Still life goes back a long way in art history, right back to the Egyptians. The French call still life painting "nature morte." With the prevalence of rabbit carcasses, boiled lobsters and cuts of beef, it is easy to see still life as dead nature.

Still life is often viewed as a celebration of conspicuous consumption and painterly skill. Quite frequently, nature morte had ominous, moralizing implications. The dead, trussed-up rabbit (often with an open accusatory eye) is a warning. Alive one moment, dead the next. Take heed.

American artists embraced these classical European traditions of still life. In fact, American painters from the early Republic era like Raphaelle Peale demonstrated levels of sophistication and subtlety in still life painting that often surpassed European artistry. Peale's Blackberries shows a command of shadows and reflected light as great as any Dutch master of the 1600's. 

Raphaelle Peale, Blackberries, c. 1813

Blackberries is a masterpiece of simplicity and deep thought. Peale deftly addressed the theme of the cycle of life without heavy-handed moralizing. The red, unripe berries emerge from the shadows, there are some red drupelets in the ripening berries in the center, while the fully ripe berries hang over the edge of the bowl ready to be plucked and consumed.

American still life painting begins with the remarkable Peale family. The Peales continually demonstrated how American painters addressed still life in unique ways that did not always adhere to European art theory.

Rembrandt Peale, Rubens Peale with a Geranium, 1801

The wonderful family portrait of the Peales painted in the early 1770's by Charles Willson Peale, skillfully uses still life as an element of the larger whole. This tremendous work points the way to a later masterpiece, Rubens Peale with a Geranium, painted by his brother Rembrandt. The geranium plant, the first grown in the New World, "embraces" the young botanist, Rubens Peale, who fondly touches its terracotta pot. Nature and humanity, still life and portrait are combined in one of the truly great American works of art.

Along with the Peales, John James Audubon (1785-1851) set the tone for American art during the early Republic. Audubon was born on a sugar plantation in Haiti but grew up in France.  Audubon's father, fearing the great slave revolt which eventually erupted in Haiti in 1791, purchased a large farm near Philadelphia as a potential refuge. Audubon emigrated there as a young man and began his epic studies of North American wildlife that culminated in the nearly 500 life-size depictions of Birds of America. 

One of the most striking examples of Audubon's avian art is on display, the beautifully hand-colored engraving, Carolina Parrot.  An objection might be made that Audubon's images of American birds can hardly be considered as a proper still life. Actually, Carolina Parrot is a still life in a grim way that Audubon could never have imagined in 1828. The colorful bird has been extinct since 1918, a case of "nature morte" in the extreme.

John James Audubon, Carolina Parrot, c. 1828

The Carolina Parrot or Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis)  was the only native parrot species living in the eastern regions of the United States, from Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico. It was hunted for its plumage to decorate hats and because it was considered a "pest." Its favored habitat was riverside woodlands, a prime area for development into human habitat. 

The Carolina Parrot was a casualty of America's "Manifest Destiny." During the years 1861 to 1865, Americans paused from recklessly killing wildlife to shooting each other. The terrible human holocaust of the Civil War, now reckoned to be close to a million dead, is remembered in a moving still life, Reminiscences of 1865, the introductory image of this review. It was painted by John Frederick Peto in 1904, decades after the war's end.

Peto was born in 1854, too young to serve in the Civil War. But the staggering "butcher's bill" of the war and the shocking assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in its final days left a deep psychological imprint on every American who lived during that tragic era.

Peto studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art (PAFA) but the austere nature of many of his works, in this case a faded photo of the martyred Lincoln tacked to an battered door, struck a bit too close to home. Peto never achieved much artistic success, eking out a living playing the cornet in a Methodist camp band.

William Michael Harnett, Peto's friend and fellow PAFA student, was much more successful marketing his still life paintings. After the Hunt, of which Hartnett painted several versions, was a celebrated work of art in its day. Harnett's trompe l'oeil masterpiece did not just trick the eye; it tricked the mind's eye into thinking back to a simpler, happier, more "manly" age. 

William Michael Harnett, After the Hunt, 1885

The halcyon era that Harnett evoked was the pre-Revolutionary War period. Beginning in the 1870’s, Americans began to indulge in a nostalgic interest in the early years of their country. The Colonial Revival, as it came to be called, embraced literature, architecture, craft design and the fine arts.  

Every detail of Harnett's After the Hunt proclaims the virtues of "ye olde America." The venerable musket is a 17th century model, the powder horn and flintlock pistol are of 18th century vintage and the elaborate iron work of the door latches might well have graced the Hudson Valley estate of a Dutch patroon.  The world that Harnett evoked is one that Rip van Winkle would have felt comfortable in before and after his long nap.

It was a world, even as nostalgia, that could never last. American society is in love with motion and innovation. That was the direction that Charles Sheeler took still life painting in the early 20th century. 

Sheeler was a collector of American folk art - notably Shaker furniture and hooked rugs - which he arranged as the setting for a series of interior scenes. These paintings are not included in Audubon to Warhol. Though major works of art, their omission is not a significant loss to the Philadelphia Museum exhibit. Sheeler's interiors are static where the works that are exhibited, Rolling Power and Cactus, are harbingers of action and movement.

Charles Sheeler, Rolling Power, 1939

With Rolling Power, the pause before motion is obvious. Painted in tones that recall Sheeler's earlier commercial photography, Rolling Power also evokes the sepia-tone newsreels of the 1930's. When we look at this image, the wheels and disk driver of a Model J3A Hudson Thoroughbred locomotive, we almost expect the train that this engine pulled to lurch into movement and start to pull away from the canvas on its journey across America.

With Cactus there is no such certainty. The only thing without question about this unnerving painting is that it impels us - or rather repels - to escape its harsh, searchlight glare.

                                                   

Charles Sheeler, Cactus, 1931

Cactus may well be one of the great Surrealist paintings in American art history. The idea of placing a cactus, a plant which has evolved over eons to live in an environment of unrelenting sunlight, under artificial light is positively absurd. Perhaps that is the point Sheeler was trying to convey.

Sheeler was a prominent member of the Dada-inspired group that gathered around Walter and Louise Arensberg, the great patrons of avant-garde art, during the 1920's. However, Sheeler was also the appointed propagandist for the Ford Motor Company's PR campaign with his photographs and paintings of Ford's River Rouge auto plant. 

Which of these conflicting sides of his personality was at work when Sheeler painted Cactus, we'll never know. But this work reacted strongly against the kind of contemplative values of the great 19th century still life paintings. The trend continued as the 20th century unfolded, with major American artists painting still lifes that repudiated the talismans of modern life as well.

Following the Second World War, the sheer abundance of goods and services threatened American art. With “conspicuous consumption” virtually a secular religious rite, how could artists embrace an avalanche of the necessities of the good life? From the opposite vantage point, how could they find the means to reject a tidal wave of “things” that dulled human awareness and community spirit? How could American artists cope, pro or con, with Howdy Doody Time?

                                                                                                                                          Andy Warhol (American, 1928 - 1987), Brillo Boxes, 1964

                                                        
The answer was provided by Andy Warhol. Gigantic Brillo boxes or images of Campbell’s Soup cans were placed on a pedestal by Warhol. With an almost physical presence – as can be felt in the final gallery of the Philadelphia Museum exhibit – Warhol’s Brillo Boxes challenged the viewer to make a choice.

Andy Warhol brought American still life painting back, full circle, to Raphaelle Peale’s Blackberries. If we thoughtlessly consume the good things of life, the sense of blessing will be lost. If we meditate too long, the blackberries will rot.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has once again mounted an exhibit which feasts the eyes. Audubon to Warhol also asks its patrons to make their choice. Peale, Peto, Sheeler, Warhol and all the other American still life painters pondered the living values of America through depictions of the valued objects of American life. What do these mean to us?

There are, of course, no definitive answers to the meaning of life, but it’s a question that we cannot dodge forever.

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 
Images courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Introductory Image:     
John Frederick Peto (American, 1854 - 1907), Reminiscences of 1865, 1904. Oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm) Framed: 41 7/8 × 31 7/8 × 2 1/4 inches (106.4 × 81 × 5.7 cm). Lent by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Julia B. Bigelow Fund by John Bigelow.

Anne Lloyd, Gallery View of Audubon to Warhol Exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, digital photograph, 2015 © Anne Lloyd

Raphaelle Peale (American, 1774 - 1825), Blackberries, c. 1813. Oil on panel, 7 1/4 × 10 1/4 inches (18.4 × 26 cm). Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D.
Rockefeller 3rd.

Rembrandt Peale (American, 1778 - 1860), Rubens Peale with a Geranium, 1801. Oil on canvas, 28 1/8 x 24 inches (71.4 x 61 cm) Framed: 35 1/4 × 31 3/8 × 2 3/16 inches (89.5 × 79.7 × 5.6 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1985.59.1.

John James Audubon (American, 1785 - 1851), Carolina Parrot, c. 1828. Hand-colored engraving, etching, aquatint on rag paper, 38 7/8 × 25 3/4 inches (98.7 × 65.4 cm)
Framed: 44 × 34 inches (111.8 × 86.4 cm). Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Gift of Alma and Harry Coon, 2000.108.

William Michael Harnett (American,1848 - 1892), After the Hunt, 1885. Oil on canvas, 71 1/2 x 48 1/2 inches (181.6 x 123.2 cm). Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Gift of Henry K.S. Williams.

Charles Sheeler (American, 1883 - 1965), Rolling Power, 1939. Oil on canvas, 15 x 30 inches (38.1 x 76.2 cm) Framed: 22 5/8 × 37 3/4 × 2 3/8 inches (57.5 × 95.9 × 6 cm). Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts. Purchased with the Drayton Hillyer Fund.

Charles Sheeler (American, 1883 - 1965), Cactus, 1931. Oil on canvas, 45 1/8 x 30 1/16 inches (114.6 x 76.4 cm) Framed: 50 1/4 x 35 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches (127.6 x 89.5 x 8.3 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950.

Andy Warhol (American, 1928 - 1987), Brillo Boxes, 1964. Screenprint and ink on wood, Each: 17 x 17 x 14 inches (43.2 x43.2 x 35.6 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Acquired with funds contributed by the Committee on Twentieth-Century Art and as a partial gift of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 1994. © Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York