Sommer's Children

Sommer’s Children William Sommer (1867-1949)

Sommer’s Children William Sommer (1867-1949) WOLFS Gallery, Beachwood, Ohio November 27, 2020 – February 6, 2021 With an Introduction by Martin Lerner

23645 Mercantile Road, Beachwood, Ohio 44120 • (216) 721 6945 INFO@WOLFSGALLERY.COM • WWW.WOLFSGALLERY.COM

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INTERIOR WITH BOY c. 1910 Gouache on paper 15 x 13 inches Provenance: Richard A. Hundley, New York Private collection, New Jersey

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FOREWORD This has been a year of many challenges. A welcome reprieve, however, is on the horizon, presenting a rare and important opportunity for Cleveland School collectors to adopt a beautiful child; a child assured to enhance your life, make you proud and certain to spark a deep and loving relationship.

For many, bringing a painting into one’s home is an important decision and one that collectors often live with for a lifetime. To those followers who know and admire the work of William Sommer, this exhibition presents a unique opportunity to add a Sommer portrait to their collection.

We have cajoled a number of Sommer collectors to help round out this rare exhibition of portraits conceived by one learned collector and his vision to focus on this important body of Sommer’s work.

The collector, Martin Lerner, came to Cleveland as Curator of Asian Art in 1966 to work under the august director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Sherman Lee. Lerner describes his six years in Cleveland as a wonderful time in his life. Honing his curatorial skills under the master, Lerner went on to become Senior Curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. During those early years in Cleveland, Lerner spread his curatorial wings, nurturing a love affair with the powerful work of Cleveland School modernist, William Sommer (1867-1949). A lifetime later we have in Martin Lerner the foremost expert on the work of William Sommer, something that becomes evident as you read his extraordinarily illuminating essay which follows.

Michael Wolf

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INTRODUCTION

Photo: Akron Museum of Art

Many 20th-century American artists, at some time in their career, painted pictures of children—usually their own, or those of friends and acquaintances. Very few concentrated on this genre or made it a specialty. During the first half of the 20th century, aside from Robert Henri who was specifically a portrait painter, and to a lesser degree, a few other artists of the Ashcan School, such as George Luks and George Bellows who occasionally painted children, one is hard-pressed to find an artist of stature who produced a sizeable and artistically important body of children’s portraits. To my knowledge, from this period, there is only one artist who has left behind a large group of paintings of children of sufficient distinction and originality as to warrant a separate sub-chapter in the history of 20th- century American painting and that was William Sommer (1867-1949), the most important artist of the Cleveland School.

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Today Sommer is known primarily as an early modernist artist, admired especially for his landscapes and scenes of the bucolic farms and animals of the gently rolling hills of northeast Ohio, as well as pictures of still lives, interiors, and nudes. While these collectively constitute a very distinguished body of work, it was his portraits of children that stand apart from anything else produced in America during the first half of the 20th century.

A well-trained and talented commercial artist, Sommer had lived in Detroit, New York, Boston and England working for various lithograph companies before moving, at age 40, with his young family from New York to Cleveland in 1907 to work for the Otis Lithograph Company. He was at that time regarded as one of the finest lithographic artists in the country.

Portraits of children by Sommer survive from at least as early as 1890 when he was studying in Munich. After he returned to the states in 1891, he married (1895) and had three sons, the first in 1896. From then on, he began producing quite a few portraits of his three boys, both drawings and oils, in addition to the children of relatives and friends.

While Sommer’s portraits of children, dating from the time he moved to Cleveland to around 1920, include some very remarkable paintings, it is the group of pictures he painted during the 20’s, 30’s and early 40’s that forms a distinct body of work, quite unique in American art.

Sommer’s own larger-than-life personality, his philosophical attitude towards both childhood and art making, and his methods of engaging his child models all combined in this body of child portraits to yield imagery that is intense, refreshingly frank, and completely original.

Sommer’s young subjects were drawn from a convenient pool of sitters. After his three sons had grown up, there were his three grandchildren, Marvin, Gari and June, and the various children living in his new neighborhood. In 1914, after moving from Cleveland to the Brandywine Falls area between Cleveland and Akron, where he would live for the rest of his life, Sommer found that the many children of Brandywine would serve as very willing subjects for him. In addition, living nearby to Sommer were the Dominskis, a large Polish family who provided a continuous source of children to paint.

Aside from his artistic genius, William Sommer was an extraordinary man. He was an energetic, extroverted individual of enormous vitality. He was a charming raconteur, a gifted actor with an outgoing personality that could overwhelm everyone in his presence. In addition, he was intellectually highly sophisticated. He read voraciously, everything from the works of German philosophers to Russian literature to theories of Asian

PORTRAIT OF EDWIN G. SOMMER (ARTIST’S SON)

PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM LESTER SOMMER (ARTIST’S SON)

PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM LESTER SOMMER (ARTIST’S SON)

ca. 1903-04 Pastel on cardboard Signed lower right 15.75 x 10.5 inches

ca. 1905 Oil on canvas Signed lower right 25 x 19 inches

ca. 1908 Oil on canvas Signed lower left 24.5 x 18.5 inches

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culture. And he was one of the most literate of artists, leaving behind a large body of writing in the form of letters, notes to himself and others, musings on the work of other artists, and much more. And, as with many creative men with an approximation of this profile, he was a serious drinker.

Sommer was a spiritual man, a man with great intellectual curiosity, constantly discussing ideas with a wide range of friends; writers, musicians, artists and poets—the most well-known of the latter being Hart Crane. Music was an extremely important part of his life; while he was painting, and when he was entertaining friends in his studio, his record player was constantly playing everything from Bach and Wagner to Brahms and Chopin, as he commented all the while on visual analogies to the music: I feel happy when my heart is filled with music by Bach.

Under his influence my vision takes on a different slant. With a fountain pen I start with the long curves beginning almost anywhere after the first line others beg to follow quickly. Without calculation I keep going in this way, disinterested, never stopping to notice just what lines or forms are doing, until I must stop. The space is covered. I take my pen drawing home and start in with color, in the quiet studio. I try to establish a relationship of color planes keeping out shadows (not shading), prolonging forms that run together or touch, and in this way build up a oneness, that can be felt throughout the picture, without a beginning or an end.

An accidental rightness is the final result.1 Wassily Kandinsky’s theories of color and music were very important to William Sommer, who had copies of the Russian painter’s books in his library. Sommer undoubtedly was a synesthete who visualized music in terms of form, structure and color, and he constantly and excitedly spoke and wrote about his experience of synesthesia.

For the children who sat for him, Sommer was a fascinating entertainer. He sang to them, imitated the sounds of musical instruments, told stories and kept them captivated. In addition, he would give them candy, a few coins—25 or 50 cents, occasionally a dollar. And sometimes Mrs. Sommer would have some goodies from her kitchen for them. Sitters have reported that sessions usually lasted between 1 and 2 hours, and that he told them how to pose and maintained a degree of discipline.2 From each sitting, a number of pictures would result.

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Hunter Ingalls, one of the earliest and most thorough of the art historians who studied William Sommer and his art, quoting Joe Cicora (cat. 33), one of Sommer’s child models, wrote: “… it was even more important to Sommer to keep their minds engaged and their expressions alert. According to Cicora, ‘He used to tell me about all the different places he’d traveled, and all the different concert performance he’d attended… The music would be playing and you’d be sitting there in that chair. He wouldn’t let you sit there too long. When the music came on in a certain way, he’d leave you, and go over and work on another picture, on the other side of the studio.’” 3 He was able to establish a psychological bond with his young sitters, a bond essential for the children’s emotional comfort and trust. There can be no doubt that Sommer projected his own psychological biases and attitudes onto the children; but he always treated them with great respect, and never compromised their dignity no matter how far he departed from reality or abstracted their appearance.

By the time we come to the period we are highlighting (ca. 1924-1943), Sommer was almost 60 years old, a mature artist who had been creating images for more than four decades, working at the lithograph company during the day and creating his own art at night and on weekends. And although he constantly experimented, and his stylistic progressions are obvious, his modernist style had been well-formed long ago. By around 1913, the year he went to Chicago to see the Armory Show (the first comprehensive exhibit of European modernism in the United States), after it left New York, Sommer was firmly established as Cleveland’s “ultra-modern” artist.

By 1914, in varying degrees, he had assimilated the styles, techniques and aesthetic concepts of a good deal of European modernism, incorporating that which was of interest to him into his own work. He had painted pictures with obvious stylistic allegiances to the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Fauves and Cubists.

He was also well-aware of the Symbolists and German Expressionists. Sommer maintained a sizable art library, had subscriptions to art journals and was constantly discussing art theory with fellow artists, writers and informed friends. He was enthusiastic about Matisse, Gauguin and Picasso. And, he adored Cézanne.

As he intellectually digested much of European modernism, he was engrossed in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and the ideas about ways of achieving unified consciousness espoused by P.D. Ouspensky and others, all of which affected his aesthetic philosophies. And, Sommer had long been confident in his own carefully considered aesthetic judgements, producing pictures that were so singular there has never been any danger of his art being confused with any other artist.

Sommer created many of his portraits of children at a time of great change in his life. For all of his working-life he had earned his salary from lithograph companies, producing posters of all types—for movies, advertising campaigns, and various theatrical events. But around 1926, things changed. The Otis Lithograph Company was taken over by Morgan Lithograph as the technology used to create posters was going through a transformation.

Commercial lithography as Sommer knew it started to be replaced by the cheaper method of producing posters through new photographic technology. Instead of lithographic plates, the images were produced using a new offset process, and the lithographic artists, like Sommer were no longer needed. In 1929, he lost his job.4 He was 62 years old. Compounded by the 1929 Stock Market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression, Sommer’s financial situation became problematic, as it did for many American artists.

But with this lifestyle change came a new freedom. He no longer had to make the long, daily, arduous roundtrip from Brandywine to Cleveland. He could now work in his studio full time and he could have visits from the children on a much more convenient basis. Two of his best-known portraits of children, The Little Mozart and The Bald Boy, both in the collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art, are dated 1929.5 From 1933 through 1941, he was employed by the U.S. government creating murals in public buildings but still had the freedom to do his own work in his studio.

The story of William Sommer’s paintings of children is so rich and rewarding that summing it up is not easy; fortunately, many of the paintings, mostly watercolors, have survived to tell the story for us if we look at them carefully. Based on the sheer number of surviving examples alone, it is apparent that he clearly enjoyed creating images of children throughout his long career, and considered it an important facet of his work.

In these portraits, Sommer attempted to capture the quintessential character of each sitter, suggesting the complex individuality of these young people. He was attempting to communicate something beyond mere appearance; trying to capture inner realities, the spirit and essence and idiosyncratic nature of the child. And to that end, he manipulated form and color and space with little regard for strict naturalistic representation.

As Sommer noted, “One must lift the thing out of its environment and put it where it has never been before as in dreams.”6 He would constantly remind people, “What the eye tells you isn’t the full story.” With such statements, Sommer seems to be acknowledging that some aspect of himself is often embedded in these pictures. But no matter the extent of his own psychological engagement, the image of the child is always honest and true.

The range of the portraits is most impressive. As one would expect, they vary in style, degree of complexity and elaborateness. Sommer responded differently to each child, drawing from his personal understanding of the emotional and psychological vocabulary of children in general, as well as the specific physicality of each sitter.

These portraits never got formulaic—the children are all different. Some look vulnerable, some a bit rowdy and mischievous. In many, he hints at the wisdom of the child or their youthful confidence and exuberance. In others, one encounters a somewhat haunting psychological ambiguity radiating from enigmatic expressions. And, these pictures can be quite dramatic without any hint of theatricality. Even for those portraits that are most strongly abstracted or expressionistic, straying far from visual reality, Sommer manages to create a keen study of character.

Slightly before 1920, Sommer became immersed in the writings of the artists Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound and others associated with the English movement, Vorticism. Founded by Lewis in 1914, this short-lived movement seemed to combine elements of Cubism with Italian Futurism, tied to the visual imagery of industrialization. This resulted in art that emphasized the energetic and dynamic. Each of its English practitioners developed their own radical styles stressing abstraction of angular, geometric forms and bold color.

Sommer’s startlingly powerful painting of around 1925, Harmony in Brown (cat. 3), can probably be better understood assuming at least some reliance on Vorticist theory.

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As an artist who was constantly experimenting, Sommer was known to have painted pictures in different styles at the same time. The boy who is represented in Harmony in Brown, for example, appears in other paintings by Sommer in which his likeness is treated in a considerably less expressionistic manner.

Two other outstanding paintings of approximately the same date, Tiger Boy, (cat. 4), and Green-Eyed Girl (cat.

2), each seemingly conceived under different aesthetic impetuses, demonstrates the wide-ranging interests of the artist, and a degree of intellectual versatility not often encountered.

One of the many major elements the watercolors have in common is the display of Sommer’s mastery with line. Sommer’s fluency with pen or pencil, or matchstick dipped in ink, approached an almost legendary status among his peers. Sommer, the natural teacher, was constantly explaining the crucial significance of line to his coworkers at the Otis Lithograph Company and the artists who sketched from models at the Kokoon Art Klub, a sketching club he cofounded in 1911.

He rhapsodized about the significance of line, philosophized over its mystical properties, and preached the need to totally control it. He was emphatic that the crucial role of line in his work went beyond just superb draftsmanship.

Accurate dating of his pictures meant little to Sommer.

Many of his paintings went unsigned and undated until he planned to exhibit them or sell them. So, some dates on some pictures bear little resemblance to facts.

Sometimes the discrepancy between date of creation and the date on the picture is relatively negligible, perhaps a few years, while at other times, it is off by decades, creating problems for those attempting to understand stylistic progressions in Sommer’s work.

For example, the portrait of Arthur exhibited in The Cleveland Museum of Art’s May Show of 1936 (the museum’s annual exhibit of local artistic talent) was dated 1936, which is off by three years. The sitter, Arthur Timm, a nephew of Sommer, told me he only sat for his uncle once, in 1933, when he visited and stayed with the Sommers for a while. The artist, deciding to submit it to the 1936 May Show, dated it three years later.

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The reason stemmed from the May Show’s eligibility restrictions: only works produced the previous year were allowed to compete. This kind of rule doubtless hardly mattered to Sommer.

Another, previously unidentified portrait of Arthur dateable to 1933 is cat. 18 which has often been exhibited under the title of Calculation in Blue and Brown.

A more egregious example involved Sommer dating a picture he painted around 1926 to 1941, a discrepancy of fifteen years. One of his finest portraits of his young neighbor, Tess Dominiski, is dated 1941 and was submitted that year to The Cleveland Museum’s 23rd May Show where it won a first prize. The problem is that this painting is one of the earliest known pictures of Tess, showing her looking a bit younger than another portrait of her dated to 1927. The “1941” painting was also exhibited in The Cleveland Museum’s 1950 Memorial Exhibition for Sommer cat. 42 – PL VII, and the problematic date was reiterated in the catalog.

The fifteen-year discrepancy between the true date of execution and the date inscribed on the painting obviously did not bother the artist.

Sommer kept no records of his paintings, so for the majority of his children’s pictures there are no identifications of the sitters. Some of his best-known pictures are titled The Little Mozart, Pompous Boy and The Bald Boy. Delightful as these titles are, it is the task today of researchers to try to assign them to a known sitter. As an aid, there are a small group of pictures where the sitter is identified by name in exhibitions or publications. In some cases, once a sitter with a particularly distinctive appearance has been identified by name, he or she can then be spotted in other paintings since Sommer tended to paint the children more than once. The best example of the latter are the many pictures of Tess Dominski (cat. 2, 6, 21A, 27, 28).

I know of a few occasions when, as adults, the sitters were interviewed. Hunter Ingalls, obtained useful information from Sommer’s grandchildren Marvin and his sister June (cat. 7, 8 and 17), as well as from Joe Cicora (cat. 33), Robert Kulesa, (cat. 14 and 24) and Ben Dominski.7 He interviewed a few others as well. Helen

Borsick Cullinan, the former art critic for The Plain Dealer, also interviewed Cicora and showed to him a Sommer portrait in her collection (cat. 24).8 One curious outcome of these interviews was discovering that the memories of the sitters were not infallible, and in one specific instance there was an unexplained identity mix up. In this case, Marvin Sommer told his friend Joe Cicora that Joe was the sitter for the well-known CMA watercolor, Pompous Boy, and Cicora, and a few others, maintained this misconception despite Cicora looking nothing like Pompous Boy. Ingalls, in fact identified Robert Kulesa (cat. 14 and 24) as the actual sitter, which is more reasonable.9 There are still some people who have first-hand knowledge of who the original sitters were, and it is hoped this exhibition will prompt a few of them to share this information.

Sommer was notorious among his fellow artists and some critics for what they considered to be his “unfinished” pictures. There was too much bare surface of canvas or paper or too much visible underpainting for them to accept that these were completed pictures. Such a charge was also leveled at Sommer’s portraits of children. But, for Sommer, once he had captured what he intended, he was finished and there was no purpose to working the pictures further. He understood that just one extra line or brush stroke, rather than adding to, or completing the picture, reduced the impact and diminished the whole. Sommer understood when to stop.

Hopefully, this first exhibition devoted exclusively to William Sommer’s paintings of children, in addition to focusing attention on this extraordinary body of work, will help draw attention to the complete artistic output of this superbly gifted major American artist.

Martin Lerner

1. From an autobiographical sketch Sommer submitted in July 1936 to an unknown to me art-related institution.

2. From an unpublished manuscript by Hunter Ingalls, pp. 104-105. Most of Ingalls research can be found in his 1970 Doctoral dissertation for Columbia University, titled “The Several Dimensions of William Sommer”.

Ingalls was one of the earliest art historians to carefully examine Sommer’s work in considerable depth. Unfortunately, very little of his original research has been published.

3. ibid., p. 108 4. In Robert Bordner’s article on Sommer in the Cleveland Press - Aug. 6, 1932, he reported that Sommer was still working at the Morgan Lithograph Company on a part-time basis.

5. The William Sommer Memorial Exhibition, The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1950, pls. XIV and XV. 6. From one of the innumerable pieces of paper found in the artist’s studio after his death. Now in the collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art. 7. Ingalls, op. cit., pp. 104-109 8. In March 1975. See, The Plain Dealer, March 23, 1975.

9. Ingalls, op.cit., p. 109.

10. “For a Native Son”, Aline B. Louchheim, The New York Times, November 5, 1950.

Seventy years ago, one year after the artist died, Aline Louchheim (married name Saarinen), the art critic for The New York Times, wrote: It is astounding that an artist of the stature of William Sommer should be so little known outside the Cleveland area in which he made his home. For this artist, who died last year at the age of 82, surely deserves a place high in the roster of American artists.

Perhaps the big memorial show which has just opened at the Cleveland Museum and the smaller version scheduled for January at the Kraushaar Gallery will bring this work the wide audience it warrants.10 Louchheim’s hope for the recognition of Sommer’s artistic achievements unexpectedly took very much longer than she anticipated. Nevertheless, it has been steady and continues to grow.

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Green Eyed Girl (Portrait of Tess Dominski) Green Eyed Girl, aside from being one of Sommer’s most successful portraits of the 1920’s, is also historically significant. If, as I strongly suspect, this is a portrait of Tess Dominski, Sommer’s neighbor and favorite sitter, it is one of the earliest representations of Tess known.

That this painting was included in the Cleveland Museum’s 1946 Annual May Show indicates that at the time it was considered to be dateable to 1946; in 2018, in a Cleveland publication, it was dated c. 1930, considerably closer to its real date.

There is a danger in identifying his sitters on the basis of physiognomy alone, since clearly the children’s faces changed as they grew, and Sommer’s interpretations varied in terms of abstraction and manipulation of forms. Here, the features and hairstyle are Tess’s, but her face is less exaggeratedly wide than usually depicted (as in no. 6).

Everything else about the picture bears out a c.1924 date.

The child’s dress is appropriate for Tess at this time, the treatment of the hands matches that of other portraits of this date, and the overall handling of color and form is what one would expect.

Assuming this is indeed Tess, then through comparison with other known portraits of her that are only slightly later, the picture should be dated c. 1924, earlier than previously suggested.

The strong color contrasts, the abstracted decorative forms on her dress, as well as in the background, the sworling mass of intense color, the sculpturesque build-up of the forms of her dress, the fine initial line drawing, all point to Sommer at the height of his artistic capability.

Martin Lerner

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GREEN EYED GIRL (PORTRAIT OF TESS DOMINSKI) c. 1924 Oil on board 20.5 x 17.5 inches Exhibited: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Ohio, 28th Annual May Show, 1946 WOLFS Cleveland: A Cultural Center, July - August 2018, illustrated #63 page 71 Provenance: Purchased at Wolf’s November 1999 Private collection, Cleveland, Ohio

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Harmony in Brown Harmony in Brown is, in many ways, the most extraordinary of the portraits in this exhibition. It is certainly the most startling. Nothing in earlier American painting would prepare one for such a picture. There simply are no stylistic precedents for it. And remarkable as it is now, one can imagine the reception such an explosive, expressionistic, radical picture would have received in the 1920s. Clearly, few American artists were painting anything vaguely as artistically courageous as this.

And, through all his stylized cubistic plane shifting, manipulations of unrealistic color and abstracted, exaggerated forms, the character of the child comes through.

Around the time this painting was created, Sommer had already been heavily involved with the aesthetic precepts of the short-lived English Vorticist movement (see main text), Cubism and the philosophical and aesthetic theories of Nietzsche and Ouspensky and others. He would have had many discussions about aesthetic theory with his close friend, the poet, Hart Crane, and all the other artists and writers that formed his circle of friends and acquaintances.

So, when considering Harmony in Brown, it is helpful to keep in mind the wide range of possible sources of inspiration available to the artist.

Martin Lerner

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HARMONY IN BROWN c. 1925 Oil on canvas mounted on board Estate stamp signature lower left 28 x 22.25 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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Tiger Boy One of the truly outstanding portraits of a child created

by Sommer during his long career was Tiger Boy, a disturbingly cerebral picture of great psychological complexity. Initially jarring, a close reading makes clear how well-thought-out this painting is and how everything about it is, aesthetically, so carefully reasoned and correct.

The emotional impact of the painting radiates from the large head of this very strange boy with his disquieting, intense, unchildlike expression. Sommer believed it was the artist’s responsibility to adjust reality in order to get at inner truths and he constantly manipulated color and form to communicate something beyond mere appearance.

With Tiger Boy, the asymmetrical positioning of his eyes and the off-center placement of his mouth is somewhat reminiscent of Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein which Sommer would have known from publications. Also recalling Picasso, the unusual arrangement of eyes and mouth establish a decided bifurcation of the face and expression; cover one-half of the boy’s face and you get one expression; cover the other half and you see something quite different. We know that Sommer had incorporated elements of Cubism in his paintings of the early 1920’s---mostly in pictures of angular buildings, and that he very much admired Picasso.

As one’s eye travels upward, one encounters another surprise, the unexpected treatment of Tiger Boy’s hair.

Here, in contrast to, or to somehow balance the intensity of the face and the unnatural colors modeling the

volumes of the face, Sommer has created one of the more extraordinary renditions of a child’s hair. Instead of seeing the hair combed or brushed or blowing free in some expected fashion, Sommer has superimposed a network of strange meandering, golden, ribbon-like forms looking like some ancient Celtic script to serve as highlights for his hair. This treatment, to my knowledge, is unprecedented in Sommer’s portraits.

The subtle turn of Tiger Boy’s body, starting with his right shoulder higher than the left, working down to his legs turned to the right, contributes to the dynamic composition, as does the angle of the chair contrasted with the frontality of the upper body and head.

The background is of a type often seen in Sommer’s portraits. On the one hand, it is a flat surface defining the shallow space of the picture; on the other, it is a visually active, ambiguous background with a wide range of tightly controlled washes of color, creating arresting spatial ambiguities. It also creates a kind of halo around the boy’s head, blue color at his left, white at his right.

It is interesting to speculate on Tiger Boy’s place in American modernist art of the first half of the 20th century. To my knowledge, nothing comparable can be found. But, if, on the one hand it seems far removed from the popular corpus of early American modernism, on the other, it could only have been painted during this period, and only by one man.

Martin Lerner

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TIGER BOY c. 1925 Oil on board Estate stamp verso 26 x 22 inches Verso: Portrait of Woman in Black Hat

Provenance: Estate of William Sommer William Lester Sommer Marvin Sommer Dr. Robert B. Benyo Exhibited: Akron Art Institute, Dec. 1945- Jan. 1946 Tiger Boy can be seen in a photo of the artist among many other pictures, prior to hanging this exhibition: Akron Beacon Journal-Dec. 23, 1945 William Sommer Memorial Exhibition, The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1950, Cat #37 William Sommer, Kraushaar Galleries, New York, Jan-Feb 1951 Cat. #12 The Cleveland School: Artists of the Western Reserve, Lake Erie College, Sept-Oct 1986

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GEORGE IN YELLOW JACKET 1926 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right 22 x 17 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Private collection, Cleveland, OH

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SEATED CHILD (PORTRAIT OF TESS DOMINSKI) c. 1926 Watercolor and ink on paper Signed lower right 28 x 21.5 inches Provenance: Richard A. Hundley, New York Private collection, New Jersey

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SHY JUNE c. 1927 Watercolor on paper Estate stamp verso lower right 15 x 11 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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PORTRAIT OF JUNE 1928 Oil on board Signed and dated lower right 24 x 18 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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THE PLAID JACKET c. 1929 Watercolor and ink on paper Signed lower right 15 x 11 inches Provenance: Richard A. Hundley, New York Private collection, New Jersey

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BOY ROCKING 1930 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right 15 x 11 inches Provenance: Richard A. Hundley, New York Private collection, New Jersey

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SMALL BOY WITH APPLES c. 1930 Gouache on board Signed with estate stamp lower center 28 x 22 inches The preparatory sketch for this painting is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection 22

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YOUNG ARTIST c. 1930 Watercolor on paper Signed lower left 18 X 12 inches Provenance: Richard A. Hundley, New York Private collection, New Jersey

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FRANKIE IN YELLOW (PRORTRAIT OF FRANKIE DOMINSKI) c. 1930 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right 21 x 16 inches Exhibited: The William Sommer Memorial Exhibition, 1950 Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, catalog #52

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Provenance: Circle Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio Private collection, Cleveland, Ohio

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IT’S ME (PORTRAIT OF ROBERT KULESA) c. 1930 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right 18 x 12.5 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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YOUNG WORKER c. 1930 Watercolor on paper Estate stamp lower right 15 x 11 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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BOY IN BLUE OVERALLS c. 1930 Watercolor on paper Embossed estate stamp signature lower right 12.5 x 19 inches Exhibited: William Sommer/Master of Watercolor, The Currier Gallery of Art, New Hampshire, March 2-April 15, 1979 The Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, July 7-Aug. 12, 1979 Museum of Art, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Aug. 31-Oct. 14, 1979, Cat. No. 12- Illustrated Provenance: Collection of Joseph Erdelac Wolf’s September 2006 Collection of Martin and Roberta Lerner

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MARVIN HOLDING PENCIL c. 1932 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right 18 x 12.5 inches Provenance: Richard A. Hundley, New York Private collection, New Jersey

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CALCULATION IN BLUE AND BROWN (PORTRAIT OF ARTHUR TIMM) 1933 Watercolor on paper 18.5 x 12 inches Exhibited: The Many Faces of Cleveland: A Century of Portraiture, Cleveland Artists Foundation, March - April, 2002 Provenance: Circle Gallery, Cleveland Ohio Private collection, Cleveland, Ohio WOLFS GALLERY |

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SEATED BOY IN WHITE SHIRT c. 1933 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right 16 x 12 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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THE BLUE SHIRT c. 1934 Watercolor on paper Signed upper left 8.5 x 7 inches

Exhibited: The William Sommer Memorial Exhibition, 1950 Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio Provenance: Collection of Joseph Erdelac Wolf’s April 1978 Collection of Martin and Roberta Lerner

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HIGH STOCKINGS c. 1935 Watercolor on paper Estate stamp signature lower left 25 x 19.5 inches Verso: Pensive Tess (Portrait of Tess Dominski)

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Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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PENSIVE TESS (PORTRAIT OF TESS DOMINSKI) c. 1935 verso

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NONCHALANT BOY c. 1935 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right 19 x 12.5 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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RESOLUTE BOY c. 1935 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right 15 x 11 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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FAMOUS BOY c. 1935 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right and inscribed by Ray Sommer 20 x 15.5 inches

Exhibited: Heights Art Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio “Artful Mementos of a Writer’s Life Helen Cullinan Collection” March - April 2005 Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Ray Sommer Collection of Helen Borsick Cullinan, gift from Ray Sommer Collection of Martin and Roberta Lerner

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LITTLE GIRL c. 1935 Watercolor on paper Estate signature lower left 15 x 11 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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Seated Boy Among the rare oils of children Sommer painted during this period, this Seated Boy is truly outstanding. It is one of his most direct and powerful depictions of concentrated mood. Within the outline of the boy’s large face, and with the potency of his large green eyes, Sommer has managed to distill an expression of thoughtful intensity.

There is nothing static in this picture --- rather, there is a series of visual and compositional contrasts throughout.

The heavy collar of the boy’s green jacket sits on his right shoulder; the white collar of his shirt comes out and rests on his left shoulder. The reddish chair is set in one direction; the weight and thrust of the boy’s body goes in the opposite direction. His body and head lean slightly to the right, playing off the vertical lines in the background.

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SEATED BOY c. 1930 Oil on canvas Signed lower left 26 x 20 inches

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Exhibited: WOLFS Cleveland: A Cultural Center, July - August 2018, illustrated #62 page 70 Provenance: Collection of Joseph Erdelac Wolfs Collection of Robert Benyo Descended in the family

Adding to the visual dynamics of the picture, the boy’s posture shifting to the right and tilting slightly forward suggesting the body is off-balance adds to the dynamism of the composition. The strong color contrast throughout sustain the painting’s visual energy.

The indeterminate, amorphous thinly brushed color of the background is anchored by the pictorial structure provided by the flanking verticals of the doorway (?) and pedestal (?). This is a typical Sommer background during this period, occurring on various paintings. The shallow, unreadable space between the back of the chair and background is also typical, as is the absence of shading.

Martin Lerner

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YOUNG GIRL #2 (PORTRAIT OF TESS DOMINSKI) c. 1935 Watercolor on paper Signed lower left 14.5 x 11 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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TIRED FEET (PORTRAIT OF TESS DOMINSKI) c. 1935 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right 15 x 11 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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YOUNG GIRL IN HIGH CHAIR c. 1935 Oil on board Signed lower right 24 x 18 inches Verso: Solitude Provenance: Richard A. Hundley, New York Private collection, New Jersey Published: William Sommer, March 1946, Ten Thirty Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio 42

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SOLITUDE c. 1935 Oil on board Signed lower right 24 x 18 inches Provenance: Richard A. Hundley, New York Private collection, New Jersey Published: William Sommer, March 1946, Ten Thirty Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio

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BOY IN YELLOW SWEATER c. 1935 Pastel, crayon and ink on canvas paper Signed lower right 19 x 14 inches Provenance: Collection of Joseph Erdelac Collection of Martin and Roberta Lerner

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BOY WITH STRIPED NECKTIE 1935 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right 20 x 15 inches Published: The Plain Dealer, April 19, 1986 Provenance: Private collection, Cleveland, Ohio

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THE LITTLE ARTIST c. 1936 Watercolor on paper Estate stamp signature lower right verso 18 x 12.5 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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THE BLUE OVERCOAT (PORTRAIT OF JOE CICORA) c. 1937 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right 18 x 12.5 inches Provenance: Collection of Joseph Erdelac Collection of Martin and Roberta Lerner

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TECHNICOLOR GIRL c. 1938 Watercolor on paper Estate stamp signature lower left 22 x 17 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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THE BLUE SHIRT c. 1938 Watercolor on paper 18 x 12.5 inches Provenance: Collection of Joseph Erdelac Wolf’s April 1978 Private collection

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE c. 1939 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right 18 x 12.5 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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SHIRTLESS BOY READING c. 1940 Watercolor on paper Estate embossed stamp “From the William Sommer Studio” 18 x 12.5 inches Provenance: Collection of Joseph Erdelac Private collection, New York

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MUSING GIRL c. 1940 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right 20 x 15 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Private collection, Cleveland, Ohio

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YOUNG BOY SEATED AT TABLE 1940 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right 17 x 12 inches Exhibited: Ten Thirty Gallery, Retrospective William Sommer Exhibit, 1944 Provenance: Ten Thrity Gallery, 1944 Private collection, Cleveland, Ohio

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RESERVATIONS c. 1940 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right 17 x 12.5 inches Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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GIRL IN GREEN COAT 1941 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right 17.5 x 12 inches

Exhibited: Ten Thirty Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio Provenance: Estate of William Sommer Edwin G. Sommer Descended in the family Private collection

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GIRL IN A RED FEZ c. 1941 Watercolor on paper Signed lower right 17.75 x 12 inches

Exhibited: Robert Miller Gallery, New York, June 1980, check list #25 Published: William Sommer - Master of Watercolor, The Currier Gallery of Art, New Hampshire, 1979, #43 Provenance: Collection of Joseph Erdelac Wolfs Collection of Robert Benyo Descended in the family

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GREEN APPLES 1943 Ink and watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right 17.75 x 12.5 inches Exhibited: Robert Miller Gallery, New York, June 1980, check list #6 Provenance: Collection of Joseph Erdelac Robert Miller Gallery, New York, June 1980 Private collection, Cleveland, Ohio WOLFS GALLERY |

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SUNDAY BOY 1932 Lithograph Signed lower left in pencil 12.75 x 9.5 inches Print-A-Month Club Cleveland, edition of 250, issued Febuary 1933 Provenance: Richard A. Hundley, New York Private collection, New Jersey

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SEATED BOY c. 1935 Lithograph Estate stamped signature lower right Edition 25/50 (posthumous printing) 12.5 x 19.25 inches Provenance: Arthur Feldman Collection Private collection, Cleveland, Ohio

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EXHIBITIONS 1901

Twelfth Annual Exhibition of the New York Water Color Club, Galleries of the American Fine Arts Society, New York City, New York

1903

Thirty-Sixth Annual Exhibition of the American Water Color Society, The American Art Galleries, New York City, New York

1913

Exhibition of the Work of Cleveland Artists, The Rowfant Club, Cleveland, Ohio

1914 Cubist Art Exhibit, Taylor Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio 1916 Fifty Pictures by Fifty Artists, Montross Gallery, New York City, New York Exhibition of Graphic Art, Laukhuff’s Book Store, Taylor Arcade, Cleveland, Ohio 1917

Exhibition of the Work of William Sommer, Laukhuff’s Book Store, Taylor Arcade, Cleveland, Ohio

1926

Exhibition by William Sommer, Cleveland’s Ultra-Modern Painter, Kokoon Art Club, Cleveland, Ohio

1927

Exhibition of Drawings by Old and Modern Masters, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

1931

Exhibition of Water Colors, Pastels, Drawings, and Miniatures by American and Foreign Artists, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York

1933

A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois First Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture, Water Colors, and Prints, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, New York

Painting and Sculpture from 16 American Cities, The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York

1934

Exhibition of Public Works of Art Project, Cleveland Public Auditorium, Cleveland, Ohio

1936

New Horizons in American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York William Sommer, Creative Painter, The Old White Art Gallery, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia

1937

Paintings and Prints by Cleveland Artists, Whitney Museum of Art, New York City, New York Second National Exhibition of American Art, Rockefeller Center, New York City, New York American Painting from 1860 Until Today, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

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1938

Paintings by the Ohio Artists working with the Federal Arts Projects under the WPA, Cincinnati, Ohio

Cleveland College (Sommer Water colors), The Little Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio

1939

Great Lakes Exhibition: Paintings by Artists of the Great Lakes Region, (Assembled by the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, aided by Great Lakes Museums, for The Patteran Society), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Ohio

1940 Annual Art Exhibition, The Cleveland Art Club, Cleveland, Ohio 1941

Exhibition of William Sommer, The Dudley Peter Allen Memorial Museum, Oberlin, Ohio

1944

A Retrospective Exhibition of the Work of William Sommer, Ten Thirty Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio

1945

Paintings and Drawings by William Sommer, Sculpture by Sol A. Bauer, Ten Thirty Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio

1946

Eleventh Annual New Year Show, The Butler Art Institute, Youngstown, Ohio William Sommer: Exhibition of Paintings, Ten Thirty Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio American Painting—from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day, Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom New Accessions, U. S. A., Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado

1947

The Work of William Sommer, Ten Thirty Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio

1948

Brandywine Show with Henry P. Boynton, Ten Thirty Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio

The Life and Works of William Sommer, Works also exhibited 1946; 1947, Akron Art Institute, Akron, Ohio

1949

Exhibition of Work by William Sommer and Samuel Bookatz, Ten Thirty Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio William Sommer Memorial Exhibition, Akron Art Institute, Akron, Ohio

1950 The William Sommer Memorial Exhibition, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio 1951

William Sommer, Kraushaar Galleries, New York City, New York

Farewell at Brandywine; Show of William Sommer’s Paintings, Schoolhouse Studio, Brandywine, Ohio

1956

William Sommer, The Museum of The Hudson Library & Historical Society, Hudson, Ohio

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1961

William Sommer: An American Individualist, Norton Galleries, New York City, New York

1964

Sommers, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

Farewell at Brandywine; Show of William Sommer’s Paintings, Schoolhouse Studio, Brandywine, Ohio

1969

The Several Dimensions of William Sommer, The Cleveland Public Library and The Friends of the Cleveland Public Library, Cleveland, Ohio

1970

William Sommer Retrospective, Akron Art Institute, Akron, Ohio

1974

Federal Art in Cleveland: 1933-1943, Cleveland Public Library, Cleveland, Ohio

1977

A Study in Regional Taste: The May Show 1919-1975, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

1979

William Sommer: Master of Watercolor, The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum,

Kansas City, Missouri

William Sommer: Master of Watercolor, The Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire

William Sommer: Master of Watercolor, University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, Iowa

1980

William Sommer, Robert Miller Gallery, New York City, New York

1983

William Sommer Watercolor Exhibition, Massillon Museum, Massillon, Ohio

1986

The Cleveland School: Artists of the Western Reserve Lake Erie College, Cleveland, Ohio

1988

Retrospective of William Sommer, Northeast Ohio Art Museum, Cleveland, Ohio

1994

William Sommer: The Modernist Muse in Ohio, Riffe Gallery, Columbus, Ohio

1999

William Sommer and the Brandywine Vision, Beck Center for the Arts, Lakewood, Ohio

2002

The Many Faces of Cleveland: A Century of Portraiture, Cleveland Artists Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio

2005

Artful Mementos of a Writer’s Life – Helen Cullinan Collection, Heights Art Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio

2010

William Sommer Exhibition, The Cleveland Artists Foundation, Lakewood, Ohio

2018

Cleveland: A Cultural Center, WOLFS Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio

Sommer in Winter, WOLFS Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio

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1922-1936;

Annual Exhibition of Work by Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen, May Show,

1938-1950

Cleveland, Ohio

1923; 1929;

Exhibition of Contemporary American Oils, Cleveland, Ohio

1931; 1940 1928-1936;

The Traveling Exhibition of Water Colors by Cleveland Artists,

1938-1949

Cleveland, Ohio

1931; 1932;

The Traveling Exhibition of Oils by Cleveland Artists, Cleveland, Ohio

1938-1947 1930-1936

Ohio State Fair, Columbus, Ohio

1938; 1939

International Water Color Exhibition, 1931, Awarded the William H. Tuthill Purchase Prize of One Hundred Dollars, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

MUSEUMS Akron Art Museum, Ohio Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois Ball State Museum of Art, Muncie, Indiana The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio Canton Museum of Art, Canton, Ohio Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio Clay Center for the Arts & Sciences, Charleston, West Virginia Cleveland Artists Foundation, Lakewood, Ohio Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri-Columbia The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri Portland Art Museum, Oregon Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The entirety of this exhibition and catalog would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of: Martin Lerner Seth Lerner Dr. Marianne Berardi Ingalls Library and Museum Archives, Cleveland Museum of Art Epstein Design Partners, Inc. Master Printing Group Barbara Merritt Photography Art Etc. Picture Faming WOLFS staff: Megan Arner and Arianne Flick To all those, anonymous and otherwise, who have selflessly contributed to this worthy endeavor – thank you.

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66 Photograph by Henry P. Boynton