Signed lower right, ‘C G Nelson’ for Carl Gustaf Simon Nelson (American, 1898-1988) and dated 1956.
A substantial, Modernist oil showing a profusion of white and pink poppies contrasted against a sky-blue background.
This painter, graphic artist and teacher immigrated from Sweden as a child and first studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (1920-1921). He received a Tiffany Foundation Scholarship to attend New York’s Art Students League (1923-1927) where he studied under Kimon Nicolaides and Kenneth Hayes Miller. Nelson also became a professional educator and held teaching posts at the American People’s School of New York, the Cambridge School of Design (1948-1952) and at the Boston YMCA until 1968.
Nelson exhibited widely and with success including at the Carnegie International (1938-1938), the Whitney Museum Biennials (1934, 1936, 1938), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (1935), the Art Institute of Chicago (1936), the Institute of Contemporary Art, the American Federation of the Arts and the Cambridge Art Association (1950-1958), among others. Over the course of a long career, he was the recipient of numerous prizes, medals and juried awards and, in 1969, Nelson’s art and his studio on Cranberry Island, Maine, were the subjects of a documentary film “Of Endless Wonder” by Betsy Seigal and David Westphall of Brandeis University.
Nelson’s professional memberships included the Art Students League, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, American Artists Congress (1955-60), and Society of Independent Artists and the Artists Equity Association, for which he served both as chapter president vice-president.
(With thanks to Edward Bentley)
Reference:
Who Was Who in American Art 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America, Peter Hastings Falk, Sound View Press 1999, Vol. 2, page 2399; Mary Towley Swanson, Tangled Web: Swedish Immigrant Artists’ Patronage Systems, 1880-1940. 2004; et al.
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