John Edward Costigan "Workers of the Soil" Signed Etching Pastoral Scene American Expressionism 1930s

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John Costigan was a self-taught painter and trained printer distinguished by his impressionistic style and affinity for bucolic scenes. Born … Read more John Costigan was a self-taught painter and trained printer distinguished by his impressionistic style and affinity for bucolic scenes. Born on February 29, 1888, in Providence, Rhode Island he was orphaned in adolescence. Costigan was taken in by his aunt and uncle, vaudeville performers Helen and Jeremiah Cohan. He began working as an errand boy and afterward held jobs in local costume jewelry factories. In 1903, Costigan moved to New York City through the assistance of his aunt and uncle, who obtained a position for him with the H.C. Miner Lithographing Company. There he resided in a theatrical boarding house and attended rehearsals for the works of his playwright cousin, George M. Cohan. The Miner Company produced posters for such theatrical works. Though Costigan began as a pressroom helper, through his twenty-eight year employment with the company he learned about printing through apprenticeships, and began applying his artistic talent professionally. Once promoted to sketch artist, Costigan worked designing posters for the Ziegfeld Follies, as well as silent pictures like D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.

Costigan’s formal art instruction was limited to a few weeks at the Art Student’s League where he studied under William Merritt Chase and George Bridgman. He stayed committed instead to a studio on 14th Street called the Kit Kat Club, where illustrators and newspaper artists spent nights sketching from live models in an informal atmosphere. By the age of thirty, Costigan exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Washington D.C., in addition to the MacDowell Club, and Babcock Gallery in New York. The year following his showing at the Babcock Gallery Costigan joined the army as a private and served in World War I. See less