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William C. GrauerWILLIAM C GRAUER 1950s Caribbean Men Working - Cleveland School WCCirca 1940s
Circa 1940s
$1,750
£1,339.08
€1,532.59
CA$2,471.46
A$2,686.05
CHF 1,439.48
MX$32,613.46
NOK 18,071.79
SEK 16,758.84
DKK 11,446.54
About the Item
The watercolor shows a cliff alive with workers. At first glance it feels almost abstract, a tangle of ochres, grays, and rusty browns. Then the figures begin to emerge. Men in light trousers and dark shirts, some bare chested, others with hats pulled low, navigate a broken landscape of rock. You can almost hear the scrape of tools on stone and the shuffle of feet on gravel.
William C. Grauer builds the scene out of angled planes and quick strokes, so the rocks look both solid and unsettled, as if they could shift at any moment. The palette is warm and dusty, with only small patches of cooler gray to break the heat. It suggests a Caribbean setting without leaning on postcard color. There is no blue sea, no lush greenery, only the raw earth and the people working in it.
The workers are drawn with an economy of line, yet each pose feels specific. A bent back, an arm raised to strike, a figure pausing on a ledge. None of them is singled out as a hero. Grauer treats them as a group, bound together by shared effort and the steep, confined space they occupy. The composition funnels your eye upward along the jagged rock faces, where figures stack almost like notes on a musical staff. The effect is both rhythmic and claustrophobic.
What is striking is how little narrative detail Grauer needs to suggest a story. We are not told exactly what is being built or quarried, but the body language hints at long, repetitive labor. There is a quiet dignity in the way he paints the men. They are not sentimentalized, yet they are the center of the picture, visually stronger than the towering stone that surrounds them.
Seen as a work from the 1950s, the watercolor carries a subtle social charge. It records a scene that would have been easy to overlook at the time. Instead of focusing on tourists or picturesque streets, Grauer points his attention at the labor that underpins island life. The painting becomes a kind of document of work and class, filtered through a modernist eye that favors structure and movement over fine detail.
The result is a picture that feels both of its moment and surprisingly current. It asks you to look closely at people who might otherwise appear as tiny silhouettes against a cliff. In Grauer’s hands they become the real architecture of the scene, shaping the landscape even as they are shaped by it.
Signed lower right.
Framed Dimensions: 24 x 21 inches
PROVENANCE: The Artist, Cleveland, Ohio;
Acquired from the above over a 50 year period by a family member of the artist, Rancho Santa Fe, California.
- Creator:William C. Grauer (1896, American)
- Creation Year:Circa 1940s
- Dimensions:Height: 13 in (33.02 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: LU516317300872
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