Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 15

Paul Sample
“Circus Yard” American Regionalist, Elephants, Tents, Performers, Clowns, Oil

Mid-20th Century

$12,000
£9,043.22
€10,567.21
CA$17,028.90
A$17,080.66
CHF 9,907.75
MX$208,502.28
NOK 114,759.79
SEK 117,448.92
DKK 78,989.62

About the Item

“Circus Yard” by Paul Starrett Sample (American, 1896-1974). A vibrant circus scene by the noted American regionalist, Paul Starrett Sample. This work captures the lively bustle behind the big top, with elephants, handlers, and performers gathered in a sunlit staging area. Sample often turned to scenes of working life and the pageantry of rural communities. His circus pictures belong to a broader exploration of American spectacle, human camaraderie, and small-town gatherings. Here he captures both the romance and the grit of circus labor. The elephants stand calm and monumental, while the performers move with a mix of fatigue and anticipation that suggests a long season still ahead. The work is oil on canvas and is signed in the lower right. It is housed in a wonderful mid-century frame. The work retains a couple of torn labels on the reverse - one from the Associated American Artists and one from the artist himself. A faint pencil inscription across the stretcher reads “(?) Yard”. Size: 20 inches tall by 24 inches wide (painting) 26.25 inches tall by 30.25 inches wide by 2 inches deep (frame) Provenance: Private collection, MD; Acquired from the above About the artist: Sample's attempt to impose a Thomas Hart Benton/Grant Wood brand of Midwestern regionalism on New England seems to have been at once affirmative and upbeat, and singularly touched with irony. None of his 1930s paintings of Vermont rural life are without a note of discord, based perhaps on his own mild suspicion of small-town social customs. His New England roots were never deep until late in his career. After a peripatetic childhood, four years at Dartmouth College, and a bout with tuberculosis, he settled in Los Angeles (1925), where he received artistic training (and inspiration) from artists as varied as Stanton MacDonald-Wright and David Alfaro Siqueiros. He also taught painting at the University of Southern California. During these same years, Sample and his wife Sylvia frequently visited Sylvia's parents in Vermont. The visits led to some of Sample's best-known paintings. In 1933, his career on the rise, Sample was appointed artist-in-residence at Dartmouth. After World War II, mural commissions and sketching trips across the country occupied much of his time. Condition: Very good overall condition. Recently professionally cleaned. Some isolated areas of stable craquelure commensurate with age. A few small areas of minor retouch. Vintage frame with typical wear. It is ready to be displayed and enjoyed!
  • Creator:
    Paul Sample (1896-1974, American)
  • Creation Year:
    Mid-20th Century
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 26.25 in (66.68 cm)Width: 30.25 in (76.84 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
    Very good overall condition. Recently professionally cleaned. Some isolated areas of stable craquelure commensurate with age. A few small areas of minor retouch. Vintage frame with typical wear. It is ready to be displayed and enjoyed!
  • Gallery Location:
    Yardley, PA
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU2911217301912

More From This Seller

View All
“An Orange Sale - Savannah, 1914” Georgia Impressionist African American Oil

“An Orange Sale - Savannah, 1914” Georgia Impressionist African American Oil

By Harry Leslie Hoffman

Located in Yardley, PA

A wonderfully vivid view of a Savannah fruit market by Harry Leslie Hoffman, dating to his 1914 trip to the city. Hoffman paints the figures with remarkable confidence and sets them...

Category

1910s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

"Dilworth Street" 1940 by Allan Rohan Crite Watercolor Boston African American

"Dilworth Street" 1940 by Allan Rohan Crite Watercolor Boston African American

By Allan Rohan Crite

Located in Yardley, PA

About this work: A superb example from Crite’s celebrated Neighborhood Series, this work is both a vibrant portrait of everyday life and an irreplaceable record of a vanished Boston ...

Category

1940s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor, Board, Graphite

You May Also Like

"Circus Is in Town, " Social Realist Painting with Elephants and Giraffe

"Circus Is in Town, " Social Realist Painting with Elephants and Giraffe

By Anne Walker

Located in Philadelphia, PA

Exuberant and vividly painted, this painting depicts the circus big top on the edge of a small town, with a wagon to one side, a pair of elephants waiting for their moment, and two c...

Category

Vintage 1930s American Art Deco Paintings

Materials

Paint

Circus Wagons

Circus Wagons

By Millard Sheets

Located in Los Angeles, CA

This watercolor is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s Circus Wagons, 1927, watercolor on paper, signed and dated lower left, 10 x19 ¾ inches (sight), provenance includes Stary-Sheets Art Gallery (Gualala, CA); J. Ralph & Louis Stone Foundation; presented in a newer metal frame behind glazing About the Painting Millard Sheets was only twenty years old and in his third year of studies at the Chouinard Art Institute when he painted Circus Wagons. Despite his youth, Sheets was already an accomplished artist who had publicly exhibited his work and won prestigious prizes. Within several years, he would have his first solo exhibition at one of Los Angeles’ premiere galleries and become a painting instructor at his alma mater. In Circus Wagons we already see Sheets deft handling of the watercolor medium and his interest in the California Scene. In this case, Sheets captures a back lot view of a traveling circus, a subject he sometimes returned to, including in a color screen print in the collection of the National Gallery. Sheets made a career by painting what he knew and observed firsthand. This approach allowed Sheets to capture with authenticity the details of each narrative. Even with a narrowly limited palette and an economy of brushstrokes, Sheets effectively depicts the southern California scene with its strong and mysterious shadows, as well as the workers and circus animals. Seen through the hindsight of his six-decade long career, Circus Wagons offers a fascinating insight into the early development of California Scene painting which would by the mid-1930s become the best recognized style on the West Coast. About the Artist Millard Sheets was the dean of California watercolorists. His list of accomplishments is so extensive that his entry in Who was Who in American Art is over forty lines. Born in Pomona, California, Sheets became a painter at an early age, winning a prize at the Los Angeles County Fair in 1918. By the mid to late-1920s, Sheets became a regular at art exhibitions in the western part of the United States, winning several additional prizes before he reached the age of twenty-five. Sheets studied at the prestigious Chouinard Art Institute from 1925 through 1929 with Frank Tolles Chamberlin and Clarence Hinkle and had his first solo show with Los Angeles’ Dalzell Hatfield Gallery in 1929. During the 1930s, Sheets was invited to exhibit at almost every major American Museum and in many ways, his work came to represent the California watercolor school...

Category

1920s American Realist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Watercolor

The Equestrian Circus Oil Painting on Canvas, Late 20th Century

The Equestrian Circus Oil Painting on Canvas, Late 20th Century

Located in Genève, GE

Work on canvas signed - Dimension with frame : 109 x 109 x 6 cm This vibrant oil on canvas by Italian artist Carlo Roselli (born 1939) depicts a lively equestrian circus performance,...

Category

Late 20th Century Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas