Salons of America Bowling Club, ca. 1934
Wood GaylorOil on canvas
17 1⁄2 × 29 3⁄4 inches
Provenance
Sid Deutsch Gallery, New York
Kraushaar Galleries, New York
Brock & Co., Concord, Massachusetts
Gaylor’s favorite subjects were his friends, whether they were relaxing in the environs of Ogunquit, Maine in the summertime (see Picnic) or attending balls and other entertainments in New York City during the rest of the year. Salons of America Bowling Club depicts just such a group enjoying that activity. The scoreboard lists Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Robert Laurent, and Stefan Hirsch among other artists. Gaylor’s utterly charming style combines simple, flat areas of color with clearly defined gestures. As noted in a New York Times review from 1963,
“Wood Gaylor[‘s]. . . main theme. . .is la vie Boheme of Greenwich Village in the thirties and forties, done in a primitivist style that sends simplified . . . people running like clockwork toys all over the place.”
New York Times, December 15, 1963
Review of Wood Gaylor exhibition at Zabriskie Gallery, New York, 1963
Friends of Wood Gaylor and fellow members of New York’s Salons of America are listed on the scoreboard:
Dave Morrison
Yasuo Kuniyoshi
Robert Laurent
Stefan Hirsch
Wood Gaylor
Alex Brooks
Adolph Dehn
Emil Holzenauer
Henry Strater
Ernest Feine
Ralph Mayer
Exhibited
- Glenwood Landing, New York, Gaylor’s Barn, Works of the Late Wood Gaylor, June 2-3, probably 1962.
- New York, New York, Zabriskie Gallery, Wood Gaylor, December 9, 1963 – January 4, 1964, no 17.
- Port Washington, New York, Gallery Odin, Innovators and Organizers of Modern Art: 1913 Amory Show thru the Thirties, November 18, 1979 – January 1980.
- New York, New York, Richard York Gallery, Modernism at the Salons of America 1922-1936, October 18 – December 8, 1995, no. 17, ill.