Walter Stuempfig, American 1914-1970
The Harvest, c.1940

£6,000

Oil on canvas
51cm × 46cm, (74cm × 68cm framed)

Stuempfig was a highly esteemed painter of landscapes and figurative compositions working in the Philadelphia area during 20th century. He grew up in Germantown, a residential section of Philadelphia. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1931 to 1935 and won its Cresson European Traveling Scholarship in 1934. His first solo exhibition was held at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1942. Solo exhibitions of his work were also held in New York, from 1943 to 1961, encountering immediate success. Beginning in the late 1940s he received numerous honors for his work. Stuempfig was a faculty member of the Pennsylvania Academy from 1948 until his death in 1970. He often summered in Europe. He was equally successful with his still-life, landscape, and figure paintings. In a great deal of Stuempfig’s work, there is an underlying flavour of homoeroticism. Here the alibi is the ‘Harvest’, with the real focus of the picture, being the four labourers.