Wednesday, November 4, 2020 – ANOTHER DISCOVERY FROM A LITTLE KNON ARTIST

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Wednesday,  November 4, 2020

OUR 200th ISSUE

OF 

FROM THE ARCHIVES

A BOAT

SAILING BY THE

ISLAND

Clyde J. Singer (1908-1999), East River, 1938, oil on canvas, 32 x 40 ¼ in.

Born in 1908, in Malvern, Ohio, forty miles south of Akron, Clyde Singer became known for his Social Realist and American Regionalist paintings and watercolors. His style and subjects were inspired by the Ash Can artists Robert Henri and John Sloan as well as the American Scene painters John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood. He studied at the Art Students League beginning in 1933, and his teachers included Curry and Thomas Hart Benton, among others.

The two artists that he admired most were George Bellows and John Sloan, and in non-classroom hours, he sought out locations where they had painted. Singer had the opportunity of meeting Sloan and developed a friendship with him, hearing stories about The Eight. Returning to Ohio, he became recognized as a talented up-and-comer in the realm of American Scene painting. From 1935 to 1940, Singer began selling paintings and became more recognized as he participated in over eighty-two exhibitions in fifty-six cities.

East River, 1938, has the appearance of an Ash Can subject, focusing upon urban life along the river on the Eastside of Manhattan. Here, a trio of young women, perhaps office workers, are in intense conversation, while two children, with their backs turned, watch a classic New York City tugboat creating a spew as well as workmen on the opposite shore. The shore opposite the promenade is a site on Welfare Island (now Roosevelt Island since 1973), a tract of land in the river between Manhattan and Queens, just north of the Queensboro, now Ed Koch, Bridge. In the painting, workmen are engaged before the several storied building, which would open the following year (1939) as the Goldwater Memorial Hospital, the Welfare Island Hospital for Chronic Diseases (thel building was razed in 2014).

Although back in Ohio in 1938, the artist was clearly enamored with New York and continued to paint scenes of the City, as he did throughout his life. The year of East River proved a laudatory one for Singer, as he won a prize at the National Academy of Design for Barn Dance (private collection).

WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

PART OF OUR WONDERFUL GROUP OF POLL WORKERS
WHO HELPED  OVER 1850 ISLANDERS CAST THEIR BALLOTS

A SPECIAL THANKS TO
OUR GREAT  GROUP OF YOUNG, ENERGETIC LINE MONITORS!!!

TUESDAY’S PHOTO OF THE DAY

ANDY SPARBER AND OTHERS THAT I WILL POST SOON.

EDITORIAL

AFTER 100 HOURS AT EARLY VOTING AND 16 HOURS TODAY, I AM GOING TO CELEBRATE  OUT  200TH ISSUE LATER IN THE WEEK.  

JUDITH BERDY

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CLARIFICATION WE ARE HAPPY TO GIVE WINNERS OF OUR DAILY PHOTO IDENTIFICATION A TRINKET FROM THE VISITOR CENTER. ONLY THE PERSON IDENTIFYING THE PHOTO FIRST WILL GET A PRIZE. WE HAVE A SPECIAL GROUP OF ITEMS TO CHOOSE FROM. WE CANNOT GIVE AWAY ALL OUR ITEMS,. PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES, WE MUST LIMIT GIVE-AWAYS. THANK YOU

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Deborah Dorff
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