Description

This is an impressionistic street scene of Far Rockaway, Queens rendered in deep, vivid colors in an oil on canvas by the artist Benjamin Kopman. This was purchased from a decommissioning of works by the Amity Arts Foundation and is in its likely original ornate carved gilt wood frame. It is a show stopper, especially for all you New Yorkers out there...

Details

• Benjamin Kopman (Russian/American, 1887-1965)
• Far Rockaway (1956)
  
• Oil on canvas
  
• Signed and dated in lower right hand corner
  
• 33" x 38" (overall) in likely original carved gilt wood frame with recently replaced linen liner. 
• Condition notes: Frame has minor gilt loss but is in overall very good condition.  Paint is substantially stable and intact, possible few specks of paint loss, seemingly in top center (sky) of painting.  Not examined under black light.

About the Artist

Painter, graphic artist and illustrator Benjamin Kopman was born in Vitebsk, Russia in 1897 and emigrated to the United States in 1903. Two years later he enrolled at the National Academy of Art and earned his first major exhibition in 1914 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He achieved both commercial and critical success throughout the next decades, working both as a WPA and commercial artist and as an exhibitor in solo and group shows. His paintings and prints are easily recognizable. Many of his subjects are of fellow immigrants, striking in their plainness and their ordinary activities. He paints in an almost primitive, cartoonish manner, using heavy black outlines that suggest the influence of Rousseau and Roualt. Kopman's work is held in the collections of many institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, MOMA, the Brooklyn Museum, the Met, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.