Robert MacDonald Graham Jr. (Missouri, 1919-2003)

Alice Oliver Reading Her Bible

1941

Robert MacDonald Graham was a 21-year old student at the Kansas City Art Institute the year this painting was made. A year earlier, his painting instructor, Thomas Hart Benton, selected five of his works for a New York exhibition at the Associated American Artists gallery in New York. According to Mariane Berardi in Under the Influence The Students of Thomas Hart Benton, the gallery owner and founder of the AAA Reeves Lewnethal purchased one of Graham's paintings before the show opened and that the New York art critic, Emily Genauer, declared that his work possessed ''a particularly appealing luminosity [sic].''

This tempera with oil glazes titled Alice Oliver Reading Her Bible depicts a woman with her bible near an unseen window that lights her from her right, displaying that luminosity that the art critic admired. It is housed in an impressive frame from the period, presumably the original. The work is signed and dated lower right front with additional information verso.

Board measures 16.5 x 13.5 with a framed size of 27.5 x 25 inches.

Provenance: Private collection, North Kansas City, Missouri.

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Very good condition. There are no issues of major scratches, losses, repairs, in-painting or touch-up. Under UV light a very small pattern of discoloration appears above the subjects right eye, it appears as intersecting fine lines. Two other tiny spots appear in the folds of the table covering, all less than 1/8th inch. No other appearances of surface variation under UV light.