This fabulous industrial style painting is by the celebrated Colorado artist, Herndon Davis. Davis is the infamous artist of the Face on the Barroom Floor at the Teller House in Central City, Colorado. This painting depicts a superb example of the 1940’s industrial style painting. It is extremely well done and shows the interior of an industrial workspace. We believe it to be a newspaper or printing business, but you may see something else entirely. It is done in the beautiful dense colors of that era blues and greens and orange and purple that are highlighted with touches of white and yellow. It is framed in a simple black frame which suits it, but we feel a more substantial frame would better accentuate the high quality and importance of this painting.
Herndon Davis, 1901-1962, was an American artist, journalist, illustrator, and painter who really wasn’t recognized in his lifetime and not until recently. He was born in Wynnewood, Oklahoma of rancher parents. At fourteen Davis moved himself to Kansas City, Missouri to take art lessons. He supported himself with unskilled labor jobs. From there he went to Chicago and apprenticed as an engraver and commercial artist. In 1920 he joined the army and was stationed in Denver. His love for Colorado and Denver must have begun at that time. But first he lived and worked in Washington DC, where he worked at the National War College creating maps of China and Japan, and New York City, where he attended the National Academy of Design and Art Students League of New York while working at the New York Herald Tribune, Washington Times-Herald and Washington Daily News. In 1936 he moved to Denver where he began to capture in paint and pencil notable people and landmarks of Denver and the west. Included in his subject matter were the notorious and the famous whether people or places. He is best known for his painting of the face of his wife on the barroom floor in Central City, Colorado. It was inspired by the poem The Face on the Barroom Floor and so it is titled. It wasn’t until after his death that friends were allowed to tell his beloved wife, Nita, was his model.
This is an important and incredible painting of 1940’s lifestyle. You need to make it yours!
