Vintage American School Scene New York Artist Henri Oren Oil painting signed, O/C, dated 1947, Park Scene with 14 people and 3 on Horseback, 24 x 32", 28 x 37" framed.
The artist who signed his works Henri Oren was born Isaac Aaron Orentlicherman in Proskurov (now Khmelnytska), Ukraine. Emigrating with his family to the United States at the age of eight, he grew up in Meriden, Connecticut, where high school teachers noted his artistic talent. He was sent to Yale University School of Art on a scholarship, which was renewed in 1919 to cover further study at the renowned Académie Julian in Paris. There, he perfected his Old Master portrait technique. His painting "Eliane" was accepted for the 1921 Salon of the French Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and exhibited at the Grand Palais in Paris. Returning to the United States, he opened a portrait studio in New York City in 1923 and also branched out into textile design. The Depression put a damper on both initiatives. Undaunted, the artist took his new wife and went back to Europe in 1932 to show her the art worlds of France and Italy. Starting a family soon made it advisable for him to take a position as a commercial artist. He branched out again in the 1930s and 1940s with a series of small landscape paintings of the Catskill Mountains and marines of old South Brooklyn shipyards. The landscapes particularly have been praised for their warm tonality and the way they appear to tilt toward the viewer, which produces a sense of repletion. He also produced watercolors of European scenes. In his last paintings, he had begun to experiment with expressionist color and form, but this work remained incomplete because of his untimely death at age 57. His civil name was Isaac Henri Oren; he appears as Isaac H. Orentlicherman and as Henri Oren in records of the Académie Julien of Paris and in the Benezit Dictionary of Artists. A detailed portrait of the artist, written by Tom Fletcher, appears in the Henri Oren Retrospective Exhibition catalog printed in 1999 by the Fletcher Gallery in Woodstock, New York. His paintings can be found in many private collections.

28 x 37 x 3 in

10 lb