BRADLEY WALKER TOMLIN (AMERICAN 1899-1953)
Man's Head (Manner of El Greco), circa 1925-1930
oil on paper
48 x 35 cm (18 7/8 x 13 3/4 in.); unframed
signed upper right

PROVENANCE
Frank K. M. Rehn Gallery, New York, 1962
Acquired from the above by Dr. Carl D. Heinzelman, New Brunswick, NJ. (Copy of invoice available upon request. Records for Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, held at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, also contain letters from Dr. Heinzelman to the gallery in December 1962 - March 1963 regarding installments of payment for a "Tomlin painting", likely the present work).
Collection of a Lady, NJ
Private Collection, NJ, acquired from the estate of the above by the present owners

RELATED LITERATURE
Jeanne Chenault, Bradley Walker Tomlin: Early Paintings and Intimations, American Art Journal Vol. 14, No. 3 (1974), pp. 7-13. (Copy of article available upon request).

LOT NOTES
Painter Bradley Walker Tomlin is one of the great - and under-studied - American artists of the 20th century. Best known for his involvement with the New York School of Abstract Expressionism (among contemporaries and friends such as Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston and Hans Hofmann), Tomlin was also a commercial artist, portraitist, and teacher.

Tomlin’s career is distinguished by constant formal and stylistic experimentation. He began working in the early 1920s as an illustrator, including for Vogue and House and Garden, as well as children’s books. Soon after, Tomlin moved from native Syracuse to New York City, where he began producing portraits, still lives, and landscapes. In 1924, he travelled to Paris on a fellowship, as well as to England and Italy. Works from this period, including the present portrait, frequently engage Old Master artworks. Over the next thirty years, Tomlin continued expanding his artistic vocabulary, weaving together a tapestry of influences from both historical and contemporary movements: Mannerism, Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Precisionism, and finally in the 1940s, Abstract Expressionism.

Man's Head was likely executed while Tomlin was represented by Frank K. M. Rehn Gallery in New York, which the artist joined in 1929 and left in 1931 (before re-joining later). The gallery's roster featured a host of legendary contemporary American painters, including, among others: Edward Hopper, Reginald Marsh, Childe Hassam, Paul Gruppe, Maurice Prendergast and George Luks. Describing Tomlin's influences at the time, art historian Jeanne Chenault (who contributed to catalogue accompanying the artist's 1975 retrospective at The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy), writes: "...it is clear that the paintings of El Greco influenced Tomlin during the late 1920s and early 1930s, as evidenced by some of his works from that period... Tomlin recognized a similarity between the proportions of Mannerist figures and his own and applied a strange attenuation to one of his self-portraits included in the College of Art Association exhibition in 1931. One patron called him "the El Greco of America." Chenault adds: "The phase lasted only about two years."

Tomlin’s willingness to evolve, coupled with a methodical approach to painting, resulted in a relatively small body of work. By nature introspective and self-critical, the artist also destroyed many of his creations from the 1920s and 30s, making works such as the present portrait all the more rare and historically significant.

CONDITION
The painting is in good condition, a minuscule tear along the left edge, some adhesive residue along the perimeter and traces of previous framing, minor waviness to the paper, yellowing to the verso, a pinhole in the upper right corner. UV light inspection showed no signs of retouching.
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