Saturday, February 29, 2020

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.

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