Emlen Etting - Vintage Expressionist Portrait of Woman, Signed (C. 1940, Oil on Canvas)

Details

Description

Emlen Etting (American, 1905–1993), circa 1940
Title:Lot's Wife
Dimensions: 36.75" W x 30.75" H (sight)
Frame: Textured grey painted frame
… Read more Emlen Etting (American, 1905–1993), circa 1940
Title:Lot's Wife
Dimensions: 36.75" W x 30.75" H (sight)
Frame: Textured grey painted frame
Signature: Signed lower right
Provenance: Midtown Galleries, New York (original gallery tag and sales tag verso)
Condition: Fair; craquelure throughout the canvas. Small chip to paint in the lower left quadrant. Wear consistent with age. Please refer to photos for details.

Expressionist oil portrait of a woman, titled Lot's Wife. Signed in the lower right corner. Housed in a larger textured grey painted frame. The verso retains the original sales tag and gallery tag from Midtown Galleries, New York. The painting is in fair condition, with craquelure throughout the canvas and a small chip to the paint in the lower left quadrant. Frame shows wear consistent with age.

Artist Biography

Emlen Etting (1905–1993) was a Philadelphia-based painter, illustrator, and sculptor whose career spanned much of the twentieth century. Born in Marion, Pennsylvania, he was raised in Europe and returned to the United States during the First World War. After graduating from Harvard in 1928 with a degree in French Literature, he moved to Paris to study painting under the noted Cubist-influenced artist André Lhote.

Etting's work was first exhibited in Philadelphia at the Edward Side Gallery in 1930, followed by a showing at the Galerie Jeanne Castel in Paris the following year. He married the Italian-American photographer and writer Gloria Braggiotti in 1938. During the Second World War, Etting served in the psychological warfare division of the Office of War Information and was present at the liberation of Paris, where he recorded the experiences of French citizens and later collaborated with Orson Welles on a recording titled "The Liberation of Paris."

Etting taught at Temple University's Tyler School of Art, the Philadelphia College of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 1982, his public sculpture Phoenix Rising was installed at Philadelphia's City Hall.

Over his lifetime, Etting exhibited in more than thirty one-man and group shows in Philadelphia, New York, Paris, and elsewhere. His works were purchased by prominent collectors including Walter Annenberg, Helen Hayes, and Mary Clark Rockefeller.

Museum Holdings:
Works by Emlen Etting are held in numerous institutional collections. The Philadelphia Museum of Art acquired at least two of his paintings and maintains the Emlen Etting Research Collection in its archives. His papers are housed at the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art. Additional holdings and archival materials can be found at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, MA), the National Gallery of Art, the Frick Collection, Yale University, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

About Midtown Galleries, New York

Midtown Galleries was a prominent New York City commercial gallery founded in 1932 by Alan D. Gruskin at 559 Fifth Avenue. Specializing in living American artists, the gallery represented academic and realist painters and deliberately avoided abstraction, distinguishing itself during a period when few commercial galleries showed contemporary American art.

The gallery operated as a cooperative in its early years, with participating artists contributing to exhibition costs and labor. Gruskin served as Art Director while his business partner, Francis C. Healey, acted as Publicity Director, producing weekly NBC radio broadcasts to promote the gallery and American art. After Healey's departure in 1935, the gallery ceased its cooperative structure.

Midtown Galleries represented approximately two dozen artists at any given time, many of whom remained with the gallery for decades. Among the gallery's notable artists were Julien Binford, Isabel Bishop, Paul Cadmus, Gladys Rockmore Davis, Emlen Etting, Dong Kingman, Oronzio Maldarelli, Waldo Peirce, and Robert Vickrey.

The gallery pioneered traveling exhibitions to colleges and art associations in communities distant from major museums, circulating eight to ten shows annually throughout the country for more than thirty-five years. Gruskin also advocated for the use of fine art in advertising and industry, obtaining commissions for his artists and assisting clients in building corporate collections. Midtown Galleries closed in 1995; its extensive archives, comprising 86.82 linear feet, are held at the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art. See less