Eugene Higgins N.A. (American, 1874-1958)

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Eugene Higgins N.A. (American, 1874-1958):
$2250.00

Oil on Canvas Board. Title: \"The Prisoner\" Signed: Lower Left by artist. Excellent Condition.

In 1921 Higgins was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design and thereafter his paintings were honored regularly at the Academy and elsewhere. He frequently exhibited at such institutions as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery, as well as at several New York City galleries. His numerous memberships included the National Arts Club, the Society of American Etchers and the Salmagundi Club.

Size without frame: 10\" x 8\"

A Beautiful gold leaf carved wood frame, size: 17 1/2\" x 16\"

ARTIST BIO:
Eugene Higgins had an illustrious career as an artist in Paris and in New York. He began to spend his summers in Lyme, Connecticut in 1924 and was a member of the Lyme Art Association, enjoying the afternoon tea receptions with his wife, singer Anita Rio, and family.

Eugene Higgins, a painter and etcher, represented with sentimentality the impact of the homeless, depressed, and less fortunate people of society. His passionate sympathy for the poor led him to generalize situation and location, painting archetypal situations rather than observed ones.

Although a Social Realist in subject matter, his style was European, much influenced by Honore Daumier, and this Old World quality made his work less popular than that of others such as Robert Henri, who had a more unique style.

Higgins was born the son of an Irish stonecutter and builder in Kansas City, Missouri, 1874. His artistic training came from Paris, France at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Academie Julian, under Jean Paul Laurens, Benjamin Constant, and Jean Leon Gerome. In 1904, the militant \"Journal of Social Satire in Art\", devoted an entire issue to Higgins\' s illustration titled \"Les Paurves\". He was acclaimed by the poet Edward Markham as \"the one powerful painter of the tragic lacks and losses.\" Higgins nineteenth-century stylistic approach, combined with subject matter that looks more European than American, has kept him from having the impact of his American contemporaries. In 1958 Eugene Higgins died in a hospital in New York after a long illness.