Charles Shepard Chapman - Mermaid with Fishes
Exceptional American modernist painting by Charles Shepard Chapman.
Charles Shepard Chapman, (1879-1962), was a supremely talented American artist. Born in New York, Chapman studied at the New York School of Art, under the mentor-ship of Walter Appleton Clark and William Merritt Chase, and later at the Ogdensburg Free Academy and Pratt Institute. He went on to teach at the Art Students League, in New York, and at the University of Wyoming.
Chapman was commissioned to paint murals by the Museum of Natural History in New York, the American Museum of Natural History, and at a West Virginia Post Office.
He was a member of and exhibited at the Salmagundi Club where his paintings won numerous awards. He was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1919 and elevated to full Academician in 1926. Chapman exhibited his work widely in the US, and was included in exhibitions at the National Academy between the years 1908 and 1950. His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Chapman created a technique in which he combined oil paints and watercolors to convey his ideas in art.
This work is a mixed media titled ‘Mermaid with Fishes’. It was created in the 1930s, it measures 10.25 x 16.25 inches sight size, and 18.75 x 24.5 x 1.5 inches overall.
Signed by the artist, lower right.
Purchased from a San Francisco, CA antique dealer in 2020.
A great example of the artist’s dreamy, surrealist scenes of mermaids, using the artist’s unique technique of mixing watercolor and oil paints on paper to create abstract imagery.
