Henry Martin Gasser Paintings

Henry Martin Gasser (1909 - 1981) End of the Tracks, Johnstown, Pennsylvania Watercolor and gouache on paper Sight 10 1/4 x 14 3/8 inches Signed lowe...

Henry Martin Gasser, 1909-1981 Watercolor and gouache on paper/board signed and inscribed Italy, with title on the back, measures: 29.5" x 21.5" painting and 38" x 29.75" including f...

Henry Martin Gasser (1909 - 1981) Snow Parking Gouache on paper 7 3/4 x 10 1/8 inches Signed lower left: H. Gasser Provenance: Private Collection, Newburgh, New York Riverdale Galle...

Antique impressionist view of Rome by Henry Gasser (1909 - 1981). Watercolor on paper, circa 1940. Signed. Displayed in a period wood frame. Image, 10"L x 8"H, overall 17"L x 15"H.

Henry Martin Gasser (1909 - 1981) Snow Parking Gouache on paper 7 3/4 x 10 1/8 inches Signed lower left: H. Gasser Provenance: Private Collection, Newburgh, New York Riverdale Galle...

Impressionist seascape "Surf Motif II" by Henry Martin Gasser (1909 - 1981). Oil on board, circa 1940. Signed lower right, "H. Gasser". Displayed in a period and possibly the ori...

Signed upper left: H. GASSER

HENRY MARTIN GASSER "RUE SANIT ANDRE DES ARTS, PARIS" WATERCOLOR AND GOUACHE, SIGNED AMERICAN, C.1960S 22 X 15 INCHES Henry Martin Gassert 1909-1981 Gasser was an American artist, teacher, and author whose social-realist paintings depicting life in his hometown of Newark, New Jersey and wintry, snow-laden renderings of the towns and harbors along the North Shore of Massachusetts earned him much attention and acclaim during the first half of the twentieth century. He also executed many critically praised works during his travels throughout Europe and during a brief but highly productive sojourn to the island of Bermuda in 1949. Known primarily for his watercolors, he worked in a variety of mediums, including oil, gouache, and casein. Gasser was born on October 31, 1909, in Newark, New Jersey. He began sketching and painting scenes of his hometown as a boy. Formally, his education in art began at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art, followed by a period of study at the Grand Central Art School in New York City. He went on to enroll at the Art Students League, also in New York, where he took classes with Robert Brackman, a renowned figurative artist and teacher of Ukrainian origin who painted portraits of many of the era’s leading public figures, including John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Charles Lindbergh, and American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. But Gasser’s primary artistic influence was the prominent “Ashcan School” painter John Grabach, with whom Gasser took private lessons and who, besides serving as a mentor to the young artist, became a father-figure as well. Grabach’s portrayals of the everyday lives of working-class individuals in Newark and New York City, particularly his ability to accurately and poignantly capture the expressions and moods of his often downtrodden subjects within the context of a deceptively provincial compositional structure, earned his skills a place alongside the most highly regarded social-realist painters of his time; in 1980, the Smithsonian Institute paid him homage by mounting a solo retrospective of his work, a highly unusual tribute for a still-living artist. Gasser’s early works, featuring the backstreets of an already decaying urban landscape filled with dilapidated row-houses and lines of laundry hanging from windows, echo in subject, style, and composition the social-realist precepts passed down to him by Grabach and other like-minded painters whom Gasser emulated, such as John Sloan and George Luks. Both Gasser and Grabach were deeply affected by the suffering brought about by the Great Depression, and many of Gasser’s early scenes include people seemingly “worn down” by life, bent over and bracing themselves against the cold winter chill, often requiring the aid of canes. Gary Erbe...

Signed lower right: H. GASSER; on verso: H. GASSER