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Stahl, Benjamin (1910 - 1987)

Currency:USD Category:Art Start Price:8,000.00 USD Estimated At:8,000.00 - 12,000.00 USD
Stahl, Benjamin (1910 - 1987)
<strong>Stahl, Benjamin </strong>
(1910 - 1987)

<strong>New Girl in Town, 1978</strong>

oil on canvas
20 x 24 inches
signed and dated lower right: <i>Stahl / 78</i>

Benjamin Stahl was a talented and successful artist, elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1979. A native of Chicago, he was an apprentice at Young & Timmins, an art studio in the city, when he was seventeen years old. During his long and productive career, he illustrated over seven hundred features for the <i>Saturday Evening Post,</i> as well as completing assignments for many other widely read magazines such as <i>The Ladies Home Journal</i> and <i>Esquire.</i> He also contributed illustrations for several books, including a children's book <i>Blackbeard's Ghost, </i>which Disney made into a movie in 1967. He created artwork for several successful advertising campaigns, including Coca Cola and Maxwell House. He was a co-founder, with Norman Rockwell, and faculty member of The Famous Artists School in Westport, Connecticut.

<i>New Girl in Town</i> has a sentimental quality to it, harking back to illustrations for popular periodicals such as <i>Harper's</i> or <i>Collier's</i. at the turn of the twentieth century, even though it was painted almost a century later. Reflecting a simpler time in American life, the young local boy dressed in his work duds has wasted no time in chatting with the new arrival, a prim young girl dressed in a style typical of a bygone era, in a long skirt and flowered hat. She sits upright with her hands delicately folded in her lap, while he tilts his chair and leans forward eargerly, elbows unknowingly and errantly placed on the table in front of him. Her face remains impassive, and while we may doubt the success of this interloper, we are left to wonder without the aid of the accompanying story to reveal the ending.—DW







Provenance:
From the Art Collection of the Genesee Country Village and Museum,
Mumford, New York

Literature:
Walt Reed, <i>The Illustrator in America (1860-2000)</i> New York, New York:
Watson-Guptill Publications, 2001