Thomas Brownell Eldred (1903-1993, born Climax, Michigan). Abstract composition. Watercolor, ink, and graphite on artist paper. Signed lower right and dated '41. New York, 1941.
Frame: H 24 in. W 19-1/2 in.
Paper: H 14-3/4 in. W 10-3/8 in.
Provenance: Connecticut Estate.
About the Artist: Thomas Brownell Eldred was an American abstract painter and printmaker who studied at the Art Students League under Thomas Hart Benton and Guy Pene du Bois before teaching printmaking at the Brooklyn Museum Art School under the WPA from 1933 to 1938, where he worked alongside fellow WPA artists including Ben Shahn, Mark Rothko, and Philip Guston, and formed a formative friendship with Werner Drewes, a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group. He went on to work at Stanley William Hayter's experimental Atelier 17 workshop in New York and Paris alongside emigre modernists including Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, and Joan Miro, and later alongside Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollock when Hayter reopened the workshop in New York in 1940. His work was collected by the Guggenheim during this period and today resides in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum and the National Gallery of Art, among others.