Portrait of Alexander Kruse

Maker Joseph Stella (American, 1877 - 1946)

Collections

American Paintings Selections

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Date1941

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 16 × 16 in. (40.6 × 40.6 cm.) frame: 22 1/2 × 22 1/2 × 1 3/4 in. (57.2 × 57.2 × 4.4 cm.)

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Richard and Liane Enkelis

Status

Not on view

Label TextJoseph Stella's career is marked by an eclectic approach to artistic style. Early on, he worked in the Social Realist style prevalent in American art at the turn of the century and typified by Robert Henri and the Ashcan School. By the time of the Armory Show in 1913, however, he had become one of America's leading Modernists, working in a style influenced by the Italian Futurists (see Le Forêt in this room). In this portrait of his friend and fellow artist Alexander Kruse, Stella employed a realist style with a clarity reminiscent of the work of American Regionalists.
Stella and Kruse both lived in Brooklyn, New York, at the time he painted this portrait. In addition to his career as an artist, Kruse wrote art criticism for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 1939 to 1955; in one review he described Stella as "the most electrifying painter in the United States."

Object number99.44