Millard Owen Sheets Original Vintage Antique WPA California Regionalist American Oil Painting
Millard Owen Sheets (June 24, 1907 – March 31, 1989); was an American painter and a representative of the regionalist California School of Painting. Later in his career, he was a teacher educational director, and architect of more than 50 branch banks in Southern California.
Millard Sheets was a native California artist who grew up in the Pomona Valley near Los Angeles. He attended the Chouinard Art Institute and studied with F. Tolles Chamberlin and Clarence Hinkle. While still a teenager, his watercolors were accepted for exhibition in the annual California Water Color Society shows and by nineteen years of age, he was elected into membership. At twenty, even before he graduated from Chouinard, he was hired to teach watercolor painting, while completing other aspects of his art education.
By the early 1930s, he was well on his way to national recognition as a prominent American artist. He exhibited works in Paris, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Houston, St. Louis, San Antonio, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Ventura, and many other cities throughout the United States. At home in Los Angeles, he was recognized as the leading figure and driving force behind the California-style watercolor movement.
Between 1935 and 1941, the recognition, awards, and output of high-quality art increased. He was mentioned in numerous issues of Art Digest, had a color reproduction in the book Eyes on America, and in 1935 at age twenty-eight, he was the subject of a book published in Los Angeles. Sales of art enabled him to travel to Europe, Central America, and Hawaii, where he painted on location.
During World War II, he was an artist-correspondent for Life Magazine and the United States Army Air Forces in India and Burma. Many of his works from this period document the scenes of famine, war, and death that he witnessed. This experience also affected his post-war art for several years. Many of his works from the 1940s, painted in California and Mexico, reflect these mood shifts, especially when he used dark tonal values and depressing subject matter. After the 1950s, his style changed again, this time featuring brighter colors and often depicting subjects from his travels worldwide.
Watercolor and oil painting was only part of Sheets' art career. Through his teaching at Chouinard Art Institute, Otis Art Institute, Scripps College, and other institutions, hundreds of artists were taught how to paint and then guided into an art career. He was director of the Los Angeles County Fair art exhibition for many years and brought world-class art to Southern California. During the Great Depression, he worked with Edward Bruce to hire artists for the Public Works of Art Project, the first New Deal art project during the Great Depression. In 1946, he served as the president of the California Water Color Society. In later years he worked as an architect, illustrator, muralist, printmaker, and juried art exhibitions.
Extraordinary example by Millard Sheets. Nude is done exquisitely; perfectly in the WPA style the artist was predominately known for. The painting is estimated to have been created in approximately 1945 and remains in the original Newcomb Macklin vintage frame. The palette includes gorgeous purple, orange, red, and blue contrasting colors. Even though Sheets was known to have painted many nudes, they are very rare to the market; and mainly exist in private collections.
Millard Owen Sheets
(June 24, 1907 – March 31, 1989)
Oil on Canvas Board
Nude, Portrait
Approximately 1951
Measurements of painting, alone are approximately 13"X14.5". With the frame, in entirety, the painting measures approximately 16" X 17.5"
The signature is very light, and small, in the lower right corner; as shown. In the upper left corner is a date of what appears to be '51; (the 5 is the most legible).
The painting and frame are in very good original condition. No condition issues
No overpaints, no restoration
All Original
Still seated and sealed in the original vintage Newcomb Macklin vintage frame, with most of the gallery paper seal still present, and the Chicago framer label on the reverse.
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