🔥 Important RARE Antique WPA New Deal Mural Oil Painting, Louise Ronnebeck '30s

Description: This is a profound and historically Important RARE Antique WPA New Deal Mural Oil Painting, and Watercolor, Gouache & Graphite on paper, by pioneering and well-known American Workers Progress Administration (WPA) muralist and fine artist, Louise Emerson Ronnebeck (1901 - 1980.) This piece is an artistic mockup for a Catholic Church mural that Ronnebeck likely created in the 1930's - 1940's but has unfortunately been lost to time. Sadly, it has been written that the majority of Ronnebeck's murals have been demolished or painted over in the decades after she created them. This piece depicts Saint Christopher carrying the child Christ on his shoulder, as he wades a tumultuous river. The words on this artwork read: "Whoever Looketh on the Image of St. Christopher on That Day Shall Not Faint or Fail." An inventory label in the lower left corner reads: "52-J," and this work is pencil signed in the lower right corner: "Louise Ronnebeck." Approximately 20 x 25 inches (including frame.) Actual visible artwork is approximately 15 1/2 x 20 1/2 inches. Very good condition, with some light scuffing and edge wear to the silvered frame. Acquired in Los Angeles County, California. Priced to sell. A much more mundane and simplistic artwork by this artist sold for $5K at Swanns Auctions in 2021. Ronnebeck is a nationally recognized and important New Deal artist, and her original pieces are held in the Kirkland Museum, Woodmere Art Museum, and publicly displayed across the Western United States. If you like what you see, I encourage you to make an Offer. Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks! About the Artist: Louise Ronnebeck Born: 1901 - Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaDied: 1980Known for: Figure, genre-crowds, animal easel and mural paintingName variants: Louise Emerson, Louise Harrington Emerson Biography from Gallup House Fine ArtLouise Emerson Ronnebeck was born in Philadelphia in 1901. She attended Barnard College, the American School in Fontainbleau, France; and Art Student's League of New York, where she was a life member. Her teachers included Kenneth Hayes Miller and George Bridgman.On a visit to Mabel Dodge Lujan's ranch in New Mexico, she met the sculptor Arnold Ronnebeck, whom she married in 1926. In that same year her husband was appointed director of the Denver Art Museum.A noted portraitist, Louise was also one of Colorado's most important public muralists, working for the Federal Art Project and other institutions. She executed mural commissions at Denver General Hospital; Morey Junior High School, Denver; Sloan's Lake Club House, Denver; Speer Hospital, Denver; Children's Hospital, Denver; Church of the Holy Redeemer, Denver; Cosmopolitan Hotel, Denver; U.S. Post Office, Grand Junction, Colorado; U.S. Post Office, Worland, Wyoming; U.S.O Building, Denver; and the Denver City and County Building.In 1931 and 1934 she received awards for work exhibited at the Denver Art Museum, and in 1946 and 1947 she was on the art faculty of the University of Denver. She also taught art at the Colorado Military School (CMS), now Colorado Academy. She was a member of the Denver Art Guild and exhibited with the group Fifteen Colorado Artists.She also exhibited widely, including at the American Art Exhibition, New York; Colorado Springs Fine Art Center; Joslyn Museum; Los Angeles Museum of Art, and San Francisco Museum of Art.In the 1970s she relocated to Bermuda where she also executed several public art commissions. Louise Emerson Ronnebeck was born in the Germantown area of Philadelphia in 1901, the youngest of three daughters of Mary Crawford Suplee and Harrington Emerson.Louise graduated from Barnard College in 1922. From 1922 through 1925, she studied painting at the Art Students League in New York under Kenneth Hayes Miller (1876-1952). Miller, known for his American Scene paintings, was an influential teacher to many of the period’s best artists of the genre, such as Edward Hopper, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Isabel Bishop and George Bellows.During the summers of 1923 and 1924, Louise studied fresco painting at the American Academy at Fountainebleu, outside of Paris. Her instructor was Paul-Albert Baudouin (1844-1931), a former student of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Along with her fresco work, she worked in oil, tempera and watercolor.In the summer of 1925, Louise and her sister, Isabel, drove from New York to Taos, New Mexico, to be the guests of Mabel Dodge Luhan at her ranch, Los Gallos. During this extended visit, she met another of Mabel’s guests, German born artist, Arnold Rönnebeck, who, coincidentally, was also visiting from New York. Together, they painted and sketched the Taos landscape, and a romance flourished.In March of 1926, Arnold and Louise married at All Angels Episcopal Church on the Upper Westside of Manhattan, followed by a small reception at Louise’s parents’ home nearby. They took what they called an “extended wedding trip” to California, Mexico, and the West. Arnold’s 1925 Weyhe Gallery one-man exhibition was traveling to San Diego in April, followed by Los Angeles in June, and the newlyweds took the opportunity to attend the exhibitions and explore the West. While the couple was in Denver, Arnold was offered the position of Director of the Denver Art Museum and the couple decided to stay. The position provided him with a consistent salary, but he was also able to continue his work as a sculptor. This, too, afforded Louise the opportunity to continue her work, even after the birth of their children. In a 1930 interview in the Rocky Mountain News, she said, “Between meal time, the mother rests while the artist works”. After settling in Denver in 1926, Arnold and Louise were active in the Denver art community. Both were founding members of the Denver Artists Guild in 1928. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, they traveled regularly to Santa Fe and Taos, and when in Taos stayed at Mabel’s compound. On one visit sometime in the 1930s, Mabel and Tony gave Arnold and Louise’s children a baby angora goat. She traveled back to Denver with the family in their car and she was so well-behaved, they named her Angelica. She remained a treasured member of the family for many years, going on mountain hikes with the family and appearing frequently in some of Louise’s works. Louise worked tirelessly taking on a variety of subjects depicting everyday life, ranging from mothers and children, men building a house to landscapes and silver mines. She also executed portrait commissions of many of Denver’s prominent citizens. She derived as much joy and satisfaction painting a crowded Western battle scene or automobile accident as she did painting a bucolic picnic scene or her daughter’s fourth grade class singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”.She received commissions for many frescoes and murals in the Denver area. Unfortunately, many of them have been lost, due to the buildings’ demolition. Some of her commissions were for the Kent School for Girls (1933) Morey Junior High (1934), the City and County Building (1935), Church of the Holy Redeemer (1938), Robert Speer Memorial Hospital for Children (1940), USO Men’s Service Center (1942), Albany Hotel (1948) Weld County Hospital in Greeley, Colorado in 1952.Building a painting career is a challenge at the best of times, but during the Depression and World War II years, even more so. However, an equally difficult obstacle she faced was the perception that women artists were not serious about their work. On occasion, she was described in belittling terms, such as “gifted socialite”, or “clever with brushes”. She proved them wrong by creating a strong and diverse body of work. During this period, many women, artists or otherwise, set aside their careers in order to marry and raise a family, beginning a career only once their children are grown and/or the death of their husband. For Louise, however, it was the opposite. The years during which she was married and raising children were her most productive. Louise was especially active in pursuing commissions through the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture, later the Section of Fine Arts. Between 1937 and 1944, she entered 16 competitions for mural commissions in Department of Justice Building, Washington, DC (1936, 1941), Fort Scott, Kansas (1937), Phoenix, Arizona (1937), Dallas Texas (1940), Amarillo, Texas (1941), Worland, Wyoming (1938), Grand Junction and Littleton, Colorado (1940), Social Security Building, Washington, D.C, (1940 and 1942), and Los Angeles, California (1944). She won two commissions for post office murals, both funded by the Treasury Department Section of Painting and Sculpture.Louise’s first Section commissioned mural, entitled The Fertile Land Remembers, was for the Worland, Wyoming Post Office in 1938. It was later moved to the Dick Cheney Federal Building in Casper, Wyoming. Louise’s second commission was for the post office and courthouse for the Colorado town of Grand Junction. The Harvest was completed and installed in 1940. It, too, was moved, to the Wayne Aspinall Federal Building. After her husband, Arnold, died in 1947, she “lost heart” and didn’t produce a great deal of work. Instead she focused her energy teaching as an Assistant Professor of Drawing and Painting in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Denver School or Art until 1950.In the mid 1950s, once both of her children were married and starting their own lives, she moved to Bermuda, where the Emerson family had vacationed for many years. She again focused on teaching at the Bermuda School for Girls from 1954-1973. Louise Emerson Ronnebeck was an ambitious muralist who challenged herself and the Denver art community by adopting the labor-intensive mediums of fresco and large-scale canvas. She persevered and prevailed in the art world during the Depression, as proven by her being awarded two highly sought after WPA commissions and producing a significant body of work. She accomplished this while committed to her husband, his career and raising their two children. She did not permit society’s expectations about marriage and motherhood to limit her artistic output. Louise achieved one of life’s most difficult objectives: balance. Louise Emerson Ronnebeck left behind a legacy of her unique impressions of the American West between the wars. Among others, Louise’s work has been exhibited at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles, California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, Denver Art Museum, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art in Denver, Forum Gallery in New York, and the Panhandle Plains Museum in Canyon Texas. Louise Emerson Ronnebeck (1901-1980)The grand-niece of Ralph Waldo Emerson, she spent much of her early life in New York. A graduate of Barnard College, she attended the Art Students League for three years, studying with Kenneth Hayes Miller, George Bridgman and Leo Lentelli. In the summers of 1923 and 1924 she attended the American Academy at Fontainebleau, France, where she learned fresco painting from Paul-Albert Baudoin, a former student of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.In the summer of 1925, while a guest of Mabel Dodge Luhan's at her compound in Taos, New Mexico, she met her future husband and noted sculptor, Arnold Rönnebeck, and socialized with authors Aldous Huxley and D.H. Lawrence. After their marriage in New York in 1926, attended by Mable Dodge and Tony Luhan, the Rönnebecks relocated to Denver where he served as director of the city's art museum for five years until resigning in 1931.Proficient in oil, tempera and watercolor, Ronnebeck frequently painted children, using her son and daughter as models. She also depicted historical events, Colorado's abandoned mines and ghost towns, and scenes from city life. A considerable portion of her work comprises mural painting during the 1930s and 1940s. It derived from her training with Baudoin in France and from her interest in the work of Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco.While raising her two children and running the family household, she entered sixteen competitions for mural commissions under the various federally-sponsored art programs during the Great Depression. She won two of them: Harvest (1940, Grand Junction) now in the city's Wayne Aspinall Federal Building, and The Fertile Land Remembers (1938, Worland, Wyoming) now in the Dick Cheney Federal Building in Casper.Ronnebeck also received commissions for frescoes and murals in Denver and elsewhere in Colorado, many of which have not survived: Kent School for Girls, Morey Junior High School, Denver City and County Building, Church of the Holy Redeemer, Bamboo Lounge at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, Robert W. Speer Hospital for Children, USO Men's Service Center, Denver Area Methodist Church, Albany Hotel and Weld County Hospital in Greeley, Colorado.From 1945 to 1951 she worked as Assistant Professor of Drawing and Painting in the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Denver. In 1948, with some of her artist colleagues at the university, she became a founding member of the 15 Colorado Artists, the group that split from the Denver Artists Guild.Following the marriages of her two children, Ronnebeck moved to Bermuda where the Emerson family had spent many vacations. She taught at the Bermuda High School for Girls and executed her last mural for St. Brendan's Hospital in 1966; it was destroyed in a later renovation. In 1973 she returned to Denver where she spent her remaining years. Louise Emerson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1901. Much of her early life was spent in New York where she graduated from Barnard College in 1922 and attended the Art Students League for three years. She spent the summers of 1923 and 1924 at the École d’Art Américaines at Fontainebleau, France, where she learned fresco painting from Paul-Albert Baudoin, a student of Puvis de Chavannes. In the summer of 1925, she and her sister Isabel were guests of Mabel Dodge Luhan at her compound in Taos, New Mexico, where she met her future husband, artist Arnold Rönnebeck. After their marriage in New York in 1926, Louise and her new husband relocated to Denver where he served as director of the Denver Art Museum. Proficient in oil, tempera and watercolor, Ronnebeck worked in a representational style often painting children, historical events, Colorado’s ghost towns and vignettes from city life. A sizable portion of her work comprises mural painting during the 1930s and early 1940s, including two murals for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Casper, Wyoming and Grand Junction, Colorado. From 1945 to 1951 she was Assistant Professor of Drawing and Painting in the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Denver. In 1948 with some of her artist colleagues at the university, she became a founding member of the 15 Colorado Artists that split from the more traditional Denver Artists Guild. She had a solo exhibition at the Denver Art Museum in 1928 and participated in many national group exhibitions. Following the marriages of her two children, she moved to Bermuda. In 1973 she returned to Denver where she spent the remaining years of her life. Women Artists Who Paved Our WayAPR 14, 2017Louise Emerson Ronnebeck – American Painter and MuralistRecently I attended the California Art Club’s annual Gold Medal Show at the Autry Museum. Chatting with one of the artists, his wife inquired whether or not I had heard of Louise Emerson Ronnebeck (1901-1980). Because I hadn’t, my friends had Louise’s granddaughter, Amy Ronnebeck Hall, contact me with information about her pioneering grandmother. I was intrigued. We hear so few stories about women artists from the previous two generations. I thought I would share with you what Amy wrote about her grandmother. I hope you’ll feel as inspired as I was. Louise was an American painter and muralist best known for her murals executed for the Works Progress Administration. In 1926, she married modernist sculptor and lithographer, Arnold Ronnebeck (1885-1947), and settled in Denver, Colorado. She built a successful painting career documenting American western history and contemporary social issues of the 1930s and 1940s. She entered 16 WPA competitons, and was awarded two commissions — Worland, Wyoming in 1937 and Grand Junction, Colorado in 1940. She successfully balanced work and family long before it was the norm. She worked tirelessly on public and private mural commissions (some in the fresco medium) in the Denver area, as well as completing hundreds of easel paintings. Her most active period was 1925-1947. She continued to work until the early 1970s, teaching art at Denver University and completing several large-scale mural projects in the 1950s and 1960s. The Fertile Land Remembers This mural is the first of two commissions that artist Louise Harrington Emerson Ronnebeck completed for the U.S. Treasury Department's Section of Fine Arts during the New Deal era of the 1930s and early 40s.The painting shows a 19th-century Wyoming pioneer family riding in a covered wagon drawn by oxen. The early 20th-century landscapes on either side of the wagon feature a barn and a large water tower, irrigated farmland, and oil wells. Spread across the sky is a cloud-like frieze of Native American men on horseback and a herd of bison.According to Ronnebeck, the layering of different time periods in her mural was inspired by "the double exposure used in many motion pictures to show the past and the present merging into one dramatic unit."The mural was created for and originally installed in U.S. Post Office in Worland, Wyoming, in 1938, and later moved to its present location in Casper, Wyoming, in 1970. The Harvest MuralGrand Junction, ColoradoLouise Emerson Ronnebeck’s The Harvest, completed in 1940, is representative of the Regionalist-style Treasury Section of Fine Arts-funded work with its depiction of a storied local industry and a significant regional history.Louise Emerson Ronnebeck’s The Harvest is a Regionalist-style mural found in James A. Wetmore’s 1918-designed Wayne N. Aspinall Federal Building United States Courthouse in Grand Junction, Colorado. Completed in 1940 under the Treasury Section of Fine Arts, the mural hangs in the building’s post office today.Art programs like the The Treasury Section of Fine Arts (TSFA) allowed for greater opportunities for women artists to work. In the typical process of creating TSFA murals, Ronnebeck, a prominent artist during the New Deal era, won the opportunity to paint The Harvest through an anonymous contest after she submitted a sample sketch. In 1940, when leading architect Louis A. Simon expanded the Wayne N. Aspinall Federal Building, Ronnebeck installed The Harvest to adorn the postmaster’s office door pediment with its distinct V-shaped bottom. Ronnebeck’s work prominently represents the history of the Ute people’s forced removal from Colorado throughout the nineteenth century. Before the 1860s, Ute people had lived in southwest Colorado for centuries and had established seasonal hunting grounds in the area. They also faced minimal encroachment from European and American settlers prior to the 1860s, until mineral interest drew more into the area. The United States government desired to increase land possession in the region. As such, they forced all seven Ute bands into a single reservation. Still, settlers intruded into reservation boundaries seeking minerals, further increasing hostility between the groups. Events like the Meeker Incident, in which a Ute group killed Agent Nathan Meeker, ten men, and took five others hostage, represented the hostility’s heights. The event culminated in an us-or-them sentiment. Settlers refused to leave, and by 1881, efforts to force the last Ute bands away from Colorado succeeded, with Southern Utes remaining within a sparse boundary. As six million acres once inhabited by the Utes became available for settlement, the Mesa County region attracted settlers who established local industries like orcharding, depicted through The Harvest’s Regionalist-style. Indeed, peaches make up more than seventy-five percent of Colorado’s fruit production today. Festivals such as 1909’s Peach Day display the fruit’s significant settler history in the area, dating back to the development of irrigation systems in the Grand Valley during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Numerous peach orchard establishments led to the Mesa area’s status as a highly concentrated peach district.The Harvest depicts a couple in the foreground harvesting a peach crop. On the couple’s sides, Ronnebeck represents episodes of western settler and Native history. On the left, settlers move into the area with their horses. On the right, Ute people leave as settlers force them out into the painting’s background featuring Grand Junction’s mesas. As such, The Harvest is characteristic of New Deal-era TSFA murals. Most of them did not choose to focus on the Great Depression or generalized art focusing on universal features. Instead, paintings like The Harvest chose to focus on thriving local industries and impactful regional histories. IN THE DETAILSMYSTERIOUS CASE OF A MISSING MASTERPIECE The mystery of the missing courthouse painting dates back to 1940 when Louise Emerson Ronnebeck hoped to reflect the strength and complexity of the region with her mural at the Grand Junction federal building. But when the painting was eventually removed for a cleaning … it disappeared for decades.Enacted in the 1930s, the Federal Arts Project funded many popular artistic initiatives like the National Park Service posters, the Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and Ronnebeck’s missing mural, “The Harvest”. Like many painters during the Great Depression, work was scarce for Ronnebeck. And there were other obstacles in her way. As a woman, she was not taken as seriously as her male counterparts having been described as a mere “gifted socialite” or “clever with brushes.”Ronnebeck proceeded to prove them all wrong. Even in the face of adversity, Ronnebeck was most prolific while married and raising children. She silenced many of her critics after being awarded two major mural commissions: the first in Wyoming, and the second at Grand Junction. Ronnebeck recognized the unrelenting balancing act of maintaining an artistic career alongside raising children, but she proved that even in the 1930s it was possible. “Between meal time, the mother rests while the artist works,” she was quoted.For her mural in Grand Junction, Ronnebeck didn’t shy away from her thoughts on equality and the changes occurring in the West at the time. The mural depicts a water wheel resting in the background, highlighting the transformation irrigation brought to the region. Additionally, Ute Indians are portrayed leaving the valley, being displaced by white settlers. In the center, a man and a woman harvest peaches. The man and the woman are equally sturdy and hard at work, emphasizing the ideal of shared labor.Unseen for more than half a century, a curious building manager came across numerous mentions of Ronnebeck’s mural...but the painting was nowhere to be foundThe manager persevered, using detective work and determination, and tracked down the painting in New York. After being re-discovered, the mural was restored and returned to Grand Junction. Ronnebeck’s son and daughter—who originally posed for the mural over 50 years prior—even unveiled the mural in the Wayne N. Aspinall Federal Building and Courthouse, where it still hangs today.In the same way irrigation transformed the relationship between the earth and those working in the Grand Junction region, DLR Group stepped in for a comprehensive renovation of the building in 2003 focusing on energy reduction. The designers restored and preserved the historic character while also becoming the GSA’s first site net-zero building on the National Register of Historic Places, paving the way for future historical sites to harvest the groundbreaking architectural fruits of their labor.

Price: 3500 USD

Location: Orange, California

End Time: 2025-01-26T23:06:46.000Z

Shipping Cost: 45 USD