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William C. GrauerWILLIAM C GRAUER 1940s Cows Cleveland School Cubist WCCirca 1940s
Circa 1940s
$1,250
£953.78
€1,085
CA$1,755.40
A$1,921.08
CHF 1,015.12
MX$22,929.35
NOK 12,954.22
SEK 11,847.69
DKK 8,104.39
About the Item
This small 7 x 10–inch watercolor from the 1940s by Cleveland School artist William Grauer is a compact demonstration of how mid century modernism could be fused with a keen eye for regional subject matter. At first glance, the painting appears almost fully abstract: a mosaic of angled planes in earthy browns, umbers, muted greens, and flashes of blue and violet that fracture the surface into a shifting patchwork. Yet the longer one looks, the more a recognizable scene begins to emerge. Near the center, a loosely aligned row of angular, dark shapes suggests a herd of cattle or grazing animals moving across a field. Legs are reduced to spindly lines, bodies to broken rectangles and triangles, but the collective rhythm is unmistakable. Grauer’s gift is to let representation hover just on the edge of abstraction, so the viewer oscillates between reading the forms as animals and appreciating them as purely formal elements in a complex design.
The palette and brushwork underscore this tension. Transparent watercolor washes slide into one another, creating soft gradations, but they are bounded by assertive, calligraphic lines that lock the composition into a crystalline structure. Earth tones dominate, evoking soil, stone, and pasture, while the unexpected injections of saturated turquoise and violet animate the landscape and hint at changing light or distant hills. This interplay between natural color suggestion and stylized geometry reflects the broader concerns of American Scene painting and modernist experimentation in the 1940s, years in which artists sought to reconcile European-derived abstraction with distinctly American places and experiences.
Within the context of the Cleveland School, known for its strong design sensibility and embrace of watercolor as a serious medium, the work feels both characteristic and personal. The modest scale encourages intimate viewing, as if one were holding a visual fragment of rural Ohio in hand, refracted through the artist’s analytic eye. Rather than present a literal pasture scene, Grauer captures its essence: movement, pattern, and the interdependence of animals and land. In doing so, he turns a familiar subject into an intricate visual puzzle, inviting viewers to reconstruct the landscape in their minds and to savor the disciplined spontaneity of his brush.
Signed lower right.
Framed Dimensions: 12 x 15 inches
PROVENANCE: The Artist, Cleveland, Ohio;
Acquired from the above over a 50 year period by a relative of the artist, Rancho Santa Fe, California.
- Creator:William C. Grauer (1896, American)
- Creation Year:Circa 1940s
- Dimensions:Height: 7 in (17.78 cm)Width: 10 in (25.4 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement Style:
- Period:
- Condition:In very fine, age appropriate condition.
- Gallery Location:Rancho Santa Fe, CA
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU516317274312
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