"The Child Star" Mid Century Portrait of a Boy With Brown Eyes Oil by William Robert Shulgold

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"The Child Star" Mid Century Portrait of a Boy with Brown Eyes Oil on Canvas

Stately portrait of a boy … Read more "The Child Star" Mid Century Portrait of a Boy with Brown Eyes Oil on Canvas

Stately portrait of a boy by William Robert Shulgold (Russian-American, 1897-1989). The subject is looking over his shoulder, directly at the viewer. (resembles child actor Sal Mineo 1955) He has brown eyes, and a popular 1950s pompadour haircut. He is wearing a white collared shirt and blue sweater vest. The portrait has a mid-century "soft focus" style. In 1943 Shulgold moved to California, where he was in demand as a portrait painter—for example, of the actor Ronald Coleman playing the film role of Richard III in A Double Life—while continuing his work in other genres. One review of a 1951 show said that “In California he has turned to gayer moods and smaller sizes in pictures of flowers, nudes, and small portraits”

Signed and dated "W.R. Shulgold 1955" in the upper right corner.
Presented in a period-appropriate carved wood frame.
Frame size: 33.25"H x 29"W
Canvas size: 24"H x 20"W

William Robert Shulgold (Russian-American, 1897-1989) was born in Russia in 1897. His family emigrated to Pittsburgh the following year. As a youth he worked for a watch maker and then in a bottling plant, but his first love was art. He enrolled at Carnegie Technical Institute (predecessor to Carnegie Mellon) where he studied art under Professor Arthur Watson Sparks, head of Carnegie's art department and considered "probably Pittsburgh's leading impressionist artist", and under Assistant Professor George W. Sotter. As a Carnegie student, he was awarded a prize for war poster design; in 1922, he created stage sets for a production of Booth Tarkington’s Penrod at the Irene Kaufmann Settlement theater. Shulgold continued to teach students at the Settlement art school for several years. Meanwhile his paintings were exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Corcoran Gallery.

Upon graduation he specialized in portraiture at the National Academy of Art under William Auerbach-Levy, and at the Art Students League. He then studied in Paris and Florence. Upon returning home he studied for some time under Charles Webster Hawthorne in Provincetown, Mass.

He then became an art professor at Carnegie. He had become an etcher of landscapes and a portrait painter in oils. In 1943 Shulgold moved to California, where he was in demand as a portrait painter—for example, of Ronald Coleman playing the film role of Richard III in A Double Life—while continuing his work in other genres. One review of a 1951 show said that “In California he has turned to gayer moods and smaller sizes in pictures of flowers, nudes, and small portraits”

His long history of exhibitions includes Pennsylvania Academy 1929-1941, Art Institute of Chicago 1931, Los Angeles County Museum of 1951, Corcoran Gallery 1926-1957, New York 1957, Carnegie International 1931-1960, and the National Gallery, Toronto. His work is held in the collection at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art and at the Federal Art Project at the Smithsonian.

Shulgold died at the age of 92 in 1989 in Los Angeles. See less