Fleeting Time Thou Hast Left Me Old. Lithograph. 347x243 mm; 13 5/8x9 5/8 inches, full margins. Edition of 250. Signed and titled in pencil, lower margin. Published by Associated American Artists, New York. 1945.
A very good impression. Grayson 11.
Albright was a native of Chicago and an American painter, sculptor and printmaker most renowned for his self-portraits, character studies and still lifes. He honed a fiercely independent style which focused on highlighting the minute detail and texture of every surface, often requiring him to spend years or even decades on a single work. Though he worked under the auspices of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) in 1933-34 and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) for a few months in 1936, Albright generally seemed to disdain the contemporary work of many other American Regionalist and Realist artists who worked in these governement supported programs. His oil on canvas, The Farmer's Kitchen, 1933-34, now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, which comes closest to capturing the feeling in the works of American Regionalist artists, shows a weary woman seated and peeling a bunch of radishes in a hard-scrabble farm kitchen. The scene is almost a parody of works by Grant Wood (1891-1942) or John Steuart Curry (1897-1946). Albright summed up his view of the American Regionalists popular at the time, observing, "There is that group of American Sceners whose pictures are more news bulletins than art. They picture the tornado, the flood, the drought lands, the TVA, but pathetically enough are six months behind the newspaper headlines and photographs."
