Oil on canvas, 1953. 517x620 mm; 20 1/4x24 1/4 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left recto. Inscribed with the scale notation "6 FT x 18 FT" in black crayon, verso.
Ex-collection the estate of the artist, Chicago; Fredricka Grell, the artist's wife, Chicago; thence by descent to Helen Grell Bellenger, the artist's sister, Council Bluffs, Iowa; Council Bluffs Public Library, Iowa; thence by descent to Arthur Louis Grell, the artist's nephew, and the artist's great-niece, Council Bluffs, Iowa; private collection, Chicago.
Born in Council Bluffs to German emigrant meat market owners, Grell (1887-1960) was sent to Germany to study and trained at School of Applied Arts in Hamburg and at the Royal Academie of Fine Arts in Munich, under Franz von Struck (1908-12). When America's involvement in World War I became certain, Grell was forced to escape Europe in 1914 through Norway and landed his first American artistic position as a stage set designer for large Broadway productions in New York in 1915.
During the late 1910s, Grell made his way back to the Midwest and settled in Chicago, where he became the main art instructor at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (1916-22) where one of his students was animator and cartoonist, Walt Disney (1901-1966). By the early 1930s, Grell had embarked on a solo career as a portrait and mural painter. He became among the most prominent muralists of the Hollywood Golden Age, with a regular clientele list that included old movie palace giants Balaban and Katz, and Rapp and Rapp architects, the Albert Pick Hotel chain, Daprato Statuary Company, Publix Theaters, Paramount and Universal Studios. Significant large scale mural commissions by Grell include: Paramount Pictures Corporate Headquarters, Los Angeles; Times Square Paramount Theatre, New York; Eldorado Hotel, New York; Gateway Theatre, Chicago; Congress Plaza Hotel, Chicago, Bank of New York lobby murals, Aragon Ballroom Grand stairway, Chicago and the Union Station World War II ticket counter mural, St. Louis.
The current work is the study for a mural, indicated by the scale inscription on the verso.
