Francis Quirk brings Raphael Soyer Artwork to Lehigh

We continue our stream of posts about artists who were helped by Francis Quirk by looking at Raphael Soyer. His work was part of a 1970 exhibition at Lehigh University. 

Raphael Soyer was a painter, draughtsman, and printmaker who believed that "if art is to survive, it must describe and express people, their lives and times. It must communicate." From an early age Soyer along with his brothers Moses and Isaac were encouraged to draw by their father, a teacher of Hebrew literature and history. Forced to leave Russia in 1912, they immigrated to the United States and settled in Brooklyn. In the mid-1920s, having studied at Cooper Union, the National Academy of Design, and the Art Students League, Soyer painted scenes of life on New York's east side. He also mentored other painters including Ruth Gikow who studied under him privately. Their work has a certain similarity.

Raphael Soyer 

His portrayals of derelicts, working people, and the unemployed around Union Square during the Depression reveal more of a poignant vision of the human condition than the art of social protest popular with many of his contemporaries. Throughout his life Soyer painted people—his friends, himself, studio models—with an unerring eye for intimacy and mood. He frequently hired the homeless as models. 

Transients by Raphael Soyer

Employement Agency by Raphael Soyer

Cafe Scene by Raphael Soyer

After his time in art school, Soyer did not immediately begin working as a professional artist, and instead painted during his free time while working other jobs. Soyer's first solo exhibition took place in 1929. Beginning in the early 1930s, he showed regularly in the large annual and biennial American exhibitions of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Carnegie Institute, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Academy of Design, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He had a series of solo exhibitions in New York galleries, and also worked in the WPA Federal Arts Project in the 1930s.

Soyer's teaching career began at the John Reed Club, New York, in 1930 and included stints at the Art Students League, the New School for Social Research and the National Academy.  

Soyer deeply admired fellow American artist Thomas Eakins, and produced a group portrait entitled Homage to Thomas Eakins, which was based on Fantin-Latour's Hommage à Delacroix.  The painting included other artists of his time with Eakins' famous Gross Clinic painting in the background. 

The Sitters in Homage to Thomas Eakins

Leonard Baskin, 15 Aug 1922 - 3 June 2000

Raphael Soyer, 25 Dec 1899 - 4 Nov 1987

Mary Soyer, 20th Century

Edward Hopper, 22 Jul 1882 - 15 May 1967

Lloyd Goodrich, 10 Jul 1897 - 27 Mar 1987

Moses Soyer, 25 Dec 1899 - 1974

Reginald Marsh, 14 Mar 1898 - 3 Jul 1954

Jack Levine, 3 Jan 1915 - 8 Nov 2010

John Koch, 1909 - 1978

Edwin Walter Dickinson, 1891 - 1978

Henry Varnum Poor, III, 30 Sep 1888 - 8 Dec 1970

John Dobbs, 2 Aug 1931 - 9 Aug 2011

Homage to Delacroix by Fantin-Latour

Among Soyer's portrait subjects were artists and writers who were his friends; these included Allen Ginsberg, Arshile Gorky, Chaim Gross, Gitel Steed, Edward Hopper, and Steve Poleskie. In 1967 the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited a retrospective of his work.

Outside of classic art, Soyer was hired in 1940, along with eight other prominent American artists, to document dramatic scenes and characters during the production of the film The Long Voyage Home, a cinematic adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's plays. He also illustrated two books for Isaac Bashevis Singer, entitled "A Little Boy in Search of God and Love" and "Exile."

Soyer's work is in numerous museums including the Museum of Modern Art; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; The New York Public Library, New York; Tel Aviv Museum, Israel; Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy and Los Angeles County Museum, California.

More on William "Lone Star" Dietz

After our initial post on William "Lone Star" Dietz, we subsequently found a very well written and researched piece about him by Linda Waggoner. If these posts have made you curious, Tom Benjey's biography "Keep A-goin' The Life of Lone Star Dietz" provides a very well researched life history. 

This post draws on both sources. He truly is a fascinating character who undoubtedly had many interesting twists in his life. 

Artwork by William Dietz

The first is that Dietz had true artisitic talent, which he exhibited from a young age. Born in 1884, he was taking art courses in Minneapolis at the age of 20 to perfect his drawing.  In 1904, he worked at the St. Louis World Fair, where his charm, good looks and artisitic talent drew considerable attention. 

Image of Sioux Warrior from Keep-A-Goin  The Life of Lone Star Dietz by Tom Benjey

At the fair, an artwork executed in grains depicting a Sioux warrior drew notice in the national press. 

Artwork by William Dietz

When he enrolled at the Carlisle School in 1907, he was descirbed as an "authentic" Sioux artist and athlete. But his stay there was certainly not uneventful. After a few months he eloped with the Director of the Art Department, Angel de Cora who was fourteen years older. 

Angel de Cora
Winnebago painter, illustrator, Native American rights advocate, and teacher at Carlisle Indian School. She was the best known Native American artist before World War I.

de Cora had come to the school to create an art program and she is widely regarded as the first Native American artist of reknown. The marriage was kept hidden for several months, but eventually came to light. Not long thereafter, Dietz was able to obtain a paid position as de Cora's assistant.

Dietz and de Cora with a pet Woflhound

The couple collaborated on a magazine called The Indian Craftsman and on art. Dietz also wrote articles for the publication. 

Illustration for Yellow Star with de Cora and Dietz signatures

William Dietz in football attire

Dietz was instrumental in creating the tradition of holiday bowl games by bringing his team to the first Rose Bowl. After coaching the Washington State Cougars to a 1916 RoseBowl win, Dietz also tried his hand at acting and appeared in a few movies. He invested in a studio founded by Tyrone Power, but it ended with a total loss for him in 1918.  later that year, while filming "Fools Gold" he would sue de Cora for divorce. She would die of pneumonia in 1919.

In addition to being a football player and a controversial Native American figure, he also was an illustrator, painter, writer, art teacher, dog breeder and actor. 

Joe Brown Boxer/Sculptor/Playground Equipment Designer/Professor

While we tend to think of Quirk as a painter, he also had an interest in sculpture as shown by his purchase of various pieces for Lehigh University and exhibitions. These exhibitions boosted the profile of the artists; helping build their resumes and careers. In an earlier post, we discussed a 1955 exhibition that included artwork by William "Lone Star" Dietz, Jose deRivera and Joe Brown.  This post focuses on Joe Brown who is best known as a sculptor and boxer, but there is much more to his story. 

Joe Brown at work in his studio working on a play structure.

Joe Brown Biography

Joe Brown was the son of Russian immigrants, he grew up in South Philadelphia and graduated South Philadelphia High School in 1926. A gifted athlete, he won a 1927 football scholarship to Temple University. He left before graduation, and briefly worked as a professional boxer. He made extra money as an artists' model, and became interested in studying sculpture. He served a 7-year apprenticeship under University of Pennsylvania professor and sculptor R. Tait McKenzie. 

Brown became the boxing coach at Princeton University in 1937, continuing until the early 1960s. He began teaching a sculpting course in 1939, became a resident artist at the university, and was made a full professor of art in 1962.  He continued teaching at Princeton until his 1977 retirement.

This is where the post takes off in a different direction. I thought it would be discussing Brown's sculptures on Veteran's Stadium, but instead we transition into his work designing play structures for children. 

Having recognized, that movement through sport and play is important for the development of young people, Joe Brown turned his attention to play equipment for the first time in 1950. Brown critiqued play equipment designed by Princeton's architecture graduate students. Challenged by the students, and somewhat embarrassed that he had no real knowledge of playground design other than his own experiences as a child, Brown began to come up with his own devices.

Photo of Jiggle Rail designed by Princeton Professor and Sculptor Joe Brown

Mr Brown improvised, on the spot, with some scrape of steel tap laying around from some repair work being done at the school. He put some pieces of metal banding together to form a small model of the spider-like device which he later came to call the Jiggle Rail. It was a intriguing device that he couldn't quit thinking about, and so later he built a full size Jiggle Rail and got permission to set it up in a school playground.

Examples of his designs were presented to the general public at the National Recreational Congress in St. Louis in 1954. Many experts believe his designs to have been revolutionary.

Ropes and Tires Play Sculpture by Joe Brown

His radically new aesthetic of play design brought him into contact with renowned architects such as Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius. In a letter to Brown, Breuer wrote: ‘These are I believe magnificently simple, sympathetic and dynamic instruments and succeed in being first-rate sculptured objects.’ His ‘dynamic instruments’ consisted of rope and/or steel and fully acquired their sculptural quality when children played on them, the rope’s instability and unpredictability demanding quick reactions and communication. 

Saddle Slide installation

Robert Nichols, one of the founders of Playground Associates, wrote to him for help when they formed their company that would soon produce the Saddle Slide. Brown termed his structures “’Play Communities’ and they included the so-called Swing-Ring, which seems to have inspired many play structures up until today.

Swing Ring designed by Sculptor Joe Brown

Whale designed by Joe Brown

Many experts believe his designs to have been revolutionary. He developed what he termed play communities, which drew attention both for their sculptural character and their play function. 

Sculptor Joe Brown designing play equipment.

Joe Brown is thus also regarded as a pioneer of modern play equipment culture, having been one of the very first to define play as preparation for the responsibilities of adulthood. Over the next few years, he installed a number of prototypes in and around Philadelphia and outside the USA, in London and Tokyo. Playground Associatges acommercialized some of his designs.

In 1959, Joe Brown published a book called Creative Playgrounds and Recreation Centers containing the designs of his first spatial rope play equipment. He derived his play concept for rope play equipment from a classic boxing ring. He believed deeply that play was a preparation for adulthood, a popular view since the early part of the twentieth century. Brown wanted his pieces to demonstrate cause and effect as part of normal behavior, with the aim of forming cooperative future citizens. We find it interesting that our search for images of Brown turned up two that showed him at work on play structures. To learn more about Joe Brown's playground pieces go here. 

Having played in parks and raised two active boys, I have vicariously enjoyed the descendents of this "enfant terrible's" designs and their benefits. In Susan Solomon's Book American Playgrounds, she quotes a description of him in his time as "the most hotly debated figure in playground architecture-- a sort of Frank Lloyd Wright among the teeterboards." He advanced thinking on play spaces significantly. 

Moving back to Brown's sculpture, he created more than 400 works - statuettes, portrait busts, and sculptures. Examples are on many college campuses, and in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design, Princeton University Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, and the National Art Museum of Sport.

Joe Brown in his studio with clay sculptures that would be cast and installed in Philadeelphia

Perhaps the best known works were the giant 15 foot tall sculptures of at Veterans Stadium. Philadelphia Veterans Stadium, informally called "The Vet", housed the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL) from 1971 through 2002 and the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1971 through 2003. The Vet also hosted the annual Army-Navy football game 17 times, first in 1976 and last in 2001, and the Philadelphia Catholic League football playoffs during the 1970s and 1980s. The 1976 and 1996 Major League Baseball All-Star Games were held at the venue. The Vet was also home to the Philadelphia Stars of the United States Football League (USFL) from 1983-1984, and Temple University Football from 1974-2002.

Punter Sculpture in place at Veterans Stadium

He was originally selected to produce the four statues by the Art Commission in 1970. In 1976, his statues of football and baseball players were installed along the walkway of Veteran's Stadium. When the Stadium was replaced by Lincoln Financial Field and Citizens Bank Park, and subsequently demolished in 2004, the Philadelphia Phillies removed and restored the statues. They were relocated to the perimeter of the Citizens Bank Park's new parking lot where the Vet once stood in March, 2005. The Punter and The Batter were relocated to the north end of the parking lot, along Hartranft Street/Phillies Drive. Tackle and Play at Second were relocated to the south end of the parking lot, along Pattison Avenue.

The Tackle by Joe Brown

New Francis Quirk Portrait Comes to Light Pastel of Edward Quirk

Through a relative of Professor Quirk, we have received an image of a pastel portrait of Francis' older brother Edward. The portrait was in a residence in Florida when the photo was taken many years ago. The exact whereabouts of the portrait today are unknown. We have also unsuccessfully tried to track down other photos of Edward.

Since the photo was taken at an angle we sought to correct for it using computer technology. Below is the original image supplied by the family member.

Photo of pastel portrait of Edward Quirk, the older brother of Francis J.Quirk by Francis J. Quirk

 We then cropped the image to remove as much of the frame as possible.

Photo of pastel portrait of Edward Quirk, the older brother of Francis J.Quirk by Francis J. Quirk (cropped)

Then using Photoshop we widened the picture to offset the narrowing caused by the angled photo.  It is not perfect, but we believe it is a reasonable approximation of the original drawing.

 

Photo of pastel portrait of Edward Quirk, the older brother of Francis J.Quirk by Francis J. Quirk (cropped with adjustment to offset angularity in supplied photo.)

This portrait is unusual in that quirk has drawn his brother from the back looking over his shoulder at the artist. In other works we have seen the use of pastel on dark backgrounds and fading in the clothing. For comparison we have provided photos of three other Quirk pastel portraits. To see more of Quirk's pastel works, you can visit a SlideShare presentation here.