Lot 691: Irene Hodes Newman

Irene Hodes Newman New York (1900-82) LOONS AT NIGHT, 9TH STREET watercolor on paper, framed signed: lower right, I.H. Newman, and inscribed on verso sight size: H22" W30" *Artist biography: Irene Hodes Newman, a skillful and ambitious watercolor painter, was born in Cameron, Missouri. As a young artist, she was singled out for favorable notice in the Art Digest review of the Morton Gallery (New York) watercolor show of September-October 1940: This year it is one of the newcomers who makes the strongest bid for top honors in the group. Irene Hodes Newman, hitherto unknown, achieves completeness and a sharp, peppery flavor in her landscape of Lazy River, with its seeming jumble of items like the shack and logs, with the rubble foreground and smooth river behind, all brought into equal play (New York Public Library Artist's File). Newman went on to an active career, indefatigable in her search for appropriate exhibition venues for her images or birds, atmospheric scenes of the Georgia Atlantic coast, and cityscapes from Savannah to New York City. She was a joiner - a member of the Baltimore Water Color Club, the American Artists Professional League, the National Arts Club in New York City and the Audubon Artists Society. Active from the late 1930s until the mid-1950s, her work hung in exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (1939; The American Water Color Society, New York (1939, 1941, 1942); the Morton Gallery, New York (1939, 1940); the Allied Artists of America, New York (1939-1942); the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland (1939, 1940, 1948-52); the Art Institute of Chicago (1940, 1941, 1949); the Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri (1940); the Brooklyn Museum (1941); the San Diego Fine Arts Society, California (1941); the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1942); the Springfield Museum of Art, Massachusetts (1945); the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio (1950); the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia (1950); and the National Gallery of Art, Washington (1955). From 1948 until 1955, Newman was affiliated with the prestigious Milch Gallery in New York City. In 1949 she was featured there in a show called "Six Watercolorists." During this period she was based in New York City, showing paintings of birds as well as New York views. Newman also showed at the Grand Central Art Gallery in New York City in 1955. Perhaps most striking in Newman's oeuvre are her views of the scenery and people of the Georgia Atlantic coast, the city of Savannah as well as the low-lying sand and marsh barrier islands off the Georgia Coast. Given her documented interest in birds, perhaps she was drawn to this coastal area with its distinctive Gullah culture, which she captured in watercolor, by its close proximity to the birding center at the Cumberland National Seashore, just south of the centers of Gullah settlement on Sea Island and St. Simons Island. Irene Newman died in New York City in the early 1960s.