(American, 1900 - 1972)
Still Life
Pastel on paper, 22 x 17 inches (sight)
Signed at lower right: “Hobson Pittman”
About the Artist
(American, 1900 - 1972)
After moving to Pennsylvania from his native North Carolina in 1918, Hobson Pittman studied art at the Pennsylvania State University in State College (where he later taught) and the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. It was during the 1930s and 1940s that Pittman developed the stylistic and iconographic means through which he explored themes of loneliness and memory—concerns he shared with numerous Southern writers of the period. His style during those years had much in common with those of other artists working in Woodstock, New York, where he painted and taught at that time. From 1949 to 1972 Pittman was an influential instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. His career is documented in the catalogues for two major retrospectives of his work: Hobson Pittman: Retrospective Exhibition, His Work Since 1920 (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1963), and The World of Hobson Pittman: A Retrospective Exhibition (State College: The Pennsylvania State University, 1972), and in The Poet's Palette: Selected Works by Hobson Pittman (Tarboro, N.C.: Blount-Bridgers House Hobson Pittman Memorial Gallery Foundation, Inc., 1999).
