
Morgan Martin
Head of Department
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Sold for US$57,600 inc. premium
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Associate Specialist
Provenance
Graham Gallery, New York, acquired from the artist, by October 1981.
Sale, Christie's, New York, May 30, 1986, lot 277.
Private collection, Texas.
Sale, Christie's, New York, May 25, 2006, lot 15, sold by the above.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
Exhibited
New York, Graham Gallery, John R. Grabach 1880-1981: Urban America Between The Wars, October 21-December 5, 1981, pp. 17, 23, no. 23, illustrated.
New York, Graham Gallery, John R. Grabach (1880-1981), March 21-May 5, 1984, p. 10, no. 18.
John R. Grabach rose to prominence during the 1920s and 1930s as a leading social realist painter, best known for his unflinching depictions of urban working-class life in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey during the Great Depression. Grabach had a deep interest in painting urban landscapes at the start of his artistic career, but as the Depression progressed in America, he became increasingly concerned with social issues and the disposition of his landscapes grew darker with somber palettes of grays, black, browns, muted greens, blues, yellows, and reds. Pennsylvania is an exceptional example of the darker style, composition, and themes of cynicism and human anonymity present in Grabach's best paintings and has been likened to his celebrated painting, The Lone House (The Empty House) (circa 1929, Washington, D.C., Smithsonian American Art Museum) that superbly exemplifies these qualities. In the present work, Grabach depicts from a high-angled view a mining town in the snow-covered hills of Pennsylvania with rows of darkened, dilapidated structures crowding the foreground, broken only by the bright, white appearance of a church. Similar dark mining structures pollute the white hills above. Through this scene presented in Pennsylvania, Grabach communicates the metaphor of a pure virgin landscape being sullied by the human forces of industrial encroachment. (Graham Gallery, John R. Grabach 1880-1981: Urban America Between The Wars, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1981, p. 17)