Lot 170: Meyer Wolfe O/B Nashville Street Scene, Exhibited

Meyer R. Wolfe (Tennessee/New York, 1897-1985) American Regionalist oil on panel painting depicting an African American couple standing on an urban Nashville street and watching a train go by on a nearby railroad overpass. Signed lower right “Wolfe” and housed in a cream painted plain wood frame. Panel: 20 in H x 24 in W. Frame: 28 in H x 32 in W. Exhibition History: “Meyer Wolfe: The Star of All Things,” The Nashville Parthenon, Feb. 5-June 6, 2021. Note: The area depicted in this undated painting is the  neighborhood near the Tennessee State Capital known as Hell’s Half Acre, likely around Gay Street, 10th Ave. North, and Jo Johnston Ave., near Meyer Wolfe’s childhood home. It was cleared in the 1950s under a series of Urban Renewal projects to make way for open greenspace, a six-lane road, and commercial buildings, and residents were relocated to public housing. The railroad bridge still stands and is in use today. Artist Biography: Meyer (“Mike”) Wolfe was born into a Jewish Lithuanian immigrant family, the second of ten children. He was raised in a low-income, racially diverse neighborhood of Nashville just north of the Tennessee State Capitol, where he observed the social and cultural lives of his African American friends. As a teen with an interest in drawing, he became a protege of Pulitzer Prize-winning Nashville cartoonist Carey Orr. In 1917 he studied briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago and worked as an illustrator. In 1918 he moved to New York and met Ashcan School painter John Sloan, who became one of his most influential teachers. Wolfe traveled to Paris in 1926 to train at the Academie Julian in Paris. While overseas, he met (and later married) the fashion photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe. Meyer exhibited at the San Francisco Art Association, the New York 1939 World’s Fair, and in Nashville, where he later returned to live. However, much of his later life was spent supporting and managing his wife’s career, and as a result, many of Wolfe’s paintings and prints were never publicly shown or sold and remained within his family. His work was the subject of a retrospective at the Parthenon in Nashville in 2021. Many of those works are included in this auction; others are in the permanent collections of the National Museum of American Art-Smithsonian Institution, the Tennessee State Museum, and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis. Sources: “Meyer Wolfe: The Star of All Things” (digital catalog for the 2021 exhibition at the Nashville Parthenon); Dr. Lawrence Wolfe; Robert Ikard, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Summer, 2007.

PROVENANCE: The estate of Dr. Lawrence Wolfe, by descent from his uncle, the artist Meyer Wolfe.

CONDITION: Very good condition. Professionally conserved in 1998 by Cumberland Art Conservation including cleaning and some scattered retouch. A copy of the conservation report is available on request.