St. George's Church, Stuyvesant Square

Artist O. Louis Guglielmi (American, born Egypt, 1906 - 1956)

Dateca. 1933

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 30 × 24 inches (76.2 × 60.96 cm)
Framed: 36 1/2 × 30 5/8 × 2 1/4 inches (92.71 × 77.79 × 5.72 cm)

Credit LineGift of Tommy Gallagher and Alice Jarcho

Object number2020.26

SignedOn stretcher, center of right member, graphite: “Louis Guglielmi”

InscribedOn frame, top right, tape with black marker: “295” On stretcher, center of top member, graphite: “ST. GEORGE’S CHURCH.” On stretcher, center of top and bottom [partial] members, stamp: “S. D. JACOBS CO / 749 . 6th AVENUE / NEAR 25th ST. N. Y. C.” On stretcher, center of right member, graphite: “#475” On stretcher, left stretcher, est. crayon, partially smudged: “l163” On stretcher, center of right member, graphite: “STUYVESANT…” [partially covered by canvas adhered to stretcher] On stretcher, top of right member, faint blue pencil: illegible

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionThis vertically oriented painting depicts a Gothic-style church next to the edge of a grassy town square populated by six people. The church is toward the background of the picture. It extends about two thirds of the way across the painting from the left edge of the canvas with its front façade on the right end, facing toward the square. The church is mostly a sandstone color with a dark blue roof and some red roof accents. There is a line of short, dark green trees running along a fence in a diagonal from the left side of the painting and slightly upward on the picture plane, passing right in front of the church. The square is to the right of this line, and within it running roughly parallel to the trees and fence is a gray sidewalk. A single, tall tree grows in the middle of the sidewalk, partially obscuring the façade of the church. A man sits on a bench along the sidewalk near the tree, two children walk further down the sidewalk toward the foreground, and another pair of children playing leapfrog are also on the sidewalk, closer to the picture plane. An elderly man with a cane or walking stick walks toward them from the right.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Realism in 20^th Century Art, Ogunquit Museum of Art, Ogunquit, Maine, August 18–September 30, 1997, unnumbered.

Surrealism and American Art, 1932-1949, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Florida, November 20, 1997-January 11, 1998.

Provenance

Possibly The Downtown Gallery, New York;

Raymond O. Johnson;

To his estate;

Purchased at its sale, American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, Sotheby’s, New York, March 17, 1994, lot 163, by Michael Rosenfeld, Connecticut, 1994-1998;

Purchased from Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, by Senior and Shopmaker Gallery, New York, 1998;

Purchased from them by Tommy Gallagher and Alice Jarcho, New York, 1998-2020 [1];

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, December 31, 2020.

[1] This painting was offered for sale by Gallagher and Jarcho in American Art, Christie’s, New York, October 28, 2020, lot 116, but failed to sell.

Published References

Michael Culver, Realism in 20^th Century Art, exh. cat. (Ogunquit, ME: Ogunquit Museum of Art, 1997), unpaginated.

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