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Item #AT-0416 "Hudson River Dusk 1937 by Joseph Lomoff (1889 - 1956)
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Description: Joseph Lomoff (1889 - 1956) "Hudson River, Dusk 1937" Oil on Artist board. Written on Verso Joseph Lomoff 1837. Hudson River Signed lower right Measurements: 8 x 10" unframed 13 x 16" framed
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Joseph Lomoff was born 1893 in Sevastopol, studied art in Odessa, and immigrated to the New York in 1915. Five years later he was working as a doorman and living with the Slatkin family as a lodger. Lomoff married Anna in 1928, his senior by two years, and it appears they did not have children. In 1940 they were living on West 33rd Street in Brooklyn with their brother-in-law's family. (Louis Perga-ment had married Anna's sister, Rebecca.)
During the Depression Lomoff worked as an artist for the WPA program. His style vacillated between a gauzy, abstract cubism and social realism. The lack of a distinctive style caused some negative critical comment about Lomoff's work. In 1937 Edward Alden Jewell, critic for The New York Times, wrote, "Lomoff['s] 'Hamilton Beach' is delightfully imaginative," but, in 1944, Jewell was less enthused. "Joseph Lomoff, in a set of 4 canvases, runs a sort of gamut from this to that; from a stylized 'Toilers of the Underground' to a filmy 'Visio
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Later in his career Lomoff returned to his "futurist" themes, but the paintings by Lomoff which seem most appreciated today are his social realist works. According to Lawrence Fine Art, "Lomoff is known for his works portraying the working man in a heroic, almost larger-than-life fashion. He was clearly influenced by the Socialist Realism of his native Russia."
Stevens Fine Art comments, "He tended to paint from a Proletarian view depicting the noble worker As so many of his New York contemporaries, he must have visited the coal mining and industrial areas in surrounding states and gained a respect for the physical labor of the common man."
Lomoff took inspiration from the shoreline of Long Island around Jamaica Bay near present day Kennedy Airport. "Hamilton Beach" and "On Jamaica Bay," both vividly colored shoreline scenes, are good examples of this oeuvre.
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Lomoff exhibited with the Society of Independent Artists in 1925, 1927-28, 1930, 1932-33, 1937, and 1940-41. The Brooklyn Museum holds several of his paintings.
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