Collections record Beta

Painting - Johnson Residence

1953-17-54

Painting on board with a gray boarder on three sides. The painting itself depicts a door with an a human figure inside, obscured by a black shadow that surrounds it. There is a strip of green running along the foreground of the painting. The horizon is filled with splotches of gray, black, yellow, white and blue. On the back of the board is written primarily in blue pencil with some letters and numbers written in red and black ink respectively: "Signal Smoke symbolizing/the coming of the White men/to the new England Coast:/Decoration in Residence of/T.J. Johnson Esq: 6 Mt. Vernon Bt./Boston AO for AP/1927."

Born in Philadelphia, Austin M. Purves Jr. (1900-1977) lived in the East Litchfield section of Litchfield for the last 40 years of his life. Purves studied art at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and the Académie Julian in Paris, France, before opening a studio in New York, where he was director of the day and night schools at the Cooper Union. After moving to Litchfield, Purves taught art at Bennington College and at Yale Art School and was a member of the Architectural League of New York, the National Society of Mural Painters, and the (then newly-formed) Hartford Art School. Over the course of his career Purves did commission work for R. H. Macy & Co., the Folger Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., the American Battle Monument in Draguignan, France, the 1939 World’s Fair, various churches, ship lines and private clients, among others. In addition to commission work, Purves drew primarily from people and nature for his own personal sketches and paintings.

• Purves, Austin, 1900-1977

1927

Overall Width 1'3.625"; Length 7.25"

• cardboard
• acrylic
• oil