Winter Valley

1944

Lamar Dodd

Painter, American, 1909 - 1996

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Never associated with any specific art movement, Lamar Dodd was a southern painter who worked in various styles throughout his long career. This depiction of Athens, where Dodd lived and taught at the University of Georgia, was influenced by the urban realism of the Ashcan school as well as the regionalist movements of the 1930s. In this work Dodd has emphasized the harsher, more urban aspects of Athens, rather than its identity as a genteel southern university town. Winter Valley depicts the eastern part of Athens, where a majority of the city’s African American residents lived close to the industrial plants they staffed. Dodd wrote that the painting’s ominous, brooding quality was inspired by his intensive study of El Greco’s View of Toledo (c. 1597, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The somber tone also echoes the mindset of a nation at war. Dodd felt that it was one of his best works. The art historian Gudmund Vigtel characterized Winter Valley as “a major example of Dodd’s intellectual program as a painter, flavored by his emotional involvement with the subject.”

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Anonymous Gift

  • Dimensions

    overall: 97.3 x 128.1 cm (38 5/16 x 50 7/16 in.)
    framed: 119.4 x 149.2 x 7 cm (47 x 58 3/4 x 2 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1971.3.1

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Winter Valley, 1944

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Anonymous gift 1971 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1944

  • Painting in the United States, 1944, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, October-December 1944, no. 50, repro.

  • Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings, John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis, March-April 1944, no. 16.

1945

  • Loan for display with permanent exhibition, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, 1945-1970 [except for periods of loan to special exhibitions].

  • Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, 1945.

1950

  • [Lamar Dodd exhibition], travelling exhibition, 1950-1951.

1970

  • Lamar Dodd: A Retrospective Exhibition, High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, 1970-1971, no. 22, repro.

1972

  • Extended loan for use by The Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1972-1973.

1973

  • Extended loan for use by the Speaker of the House, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., 1973-1976.

1977

  • Extended loan for use by Secretary Patricia Roberts Harris, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Washington, D.C., 1977-1979.

1989

  • Extended loan for use by Secretary Clayton Yeutter, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., 1989-1991.

1996

  • A Shared Vision: The Life and Art of Lamar Dodd, Lamar Dodd Art Center, LaGrange, Georgia, 1996, no 57.

1998

  • American Light: Selections from the National Gallery of Art, Art Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke, 1998, no catalogue.

Bibliography

1970

  • "Dodd: An Athens Portfolio." Athens 2, no. 4 (Fall 1970): 23, repro.

1971

  • Elsen, Patricia, ed. "College Museum Notes." Art Journal 31, no. 1 (1971): 85, repro.

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 143, repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 159, repro.

  • Vigtel, Gudmund. 100 Years of Painting in Georgia. Atlanta, 1992: 40, repro. 41.

  • Thomas, Frances Taliaferro. A Portrait of Historic Athens and Clarke County. Athens, GA, 1992: 190-191, repro.

Inscriptions

lower left: Lamar Dodd / 1944

Wikidata ID

Q20193603

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