Exhibitions: Oil in Watercolor: Oil Industry at War (Standard Oil of New Jersey)

September 18, 1944: The Brooklyn Museum opened the fall exhibition season on September 7 with a large exhibition entitled POSADA: PRINTMAKER TO THE MEXICAN PEOPLE. Some six hundred prints, blocks and photostat enlargements are assembled in four galleries on the second floor and will remain current through October 15.

Five painting exhibitions are scheduled: OIL IN WATER COLOR, September 29-November 12, will give a picture of the oil industry at war by four well known painters. Recently Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) asked Reginald Marsh and Adolf Dehn to visit some of their operations and to tell in terms of the brush what they saw. Two other painters - David Fredenthal and Millard Sheets - were asked to paint the drama of moving oil to the fronts. The show will comprise 36 such water colors by the four artists.

EUROPEAN PAINTINGS FROM THE MUSEUM COLLECTION will go on view November 8 and remain current through January 1. These paintings, among the finest in the Museum collection, were returned from storage last December.

PAINTINGS BY CHILDREN will be on view from December 7 through January 14, showing the remarkable work being done in the Museum’s Painting Class for Talented Children.

From January 11 through February 25 an exhibition of paintings and drawings by the distinguished Mexican artist JOSE MARIA VELASCO, lent by the Direccion General de Educacion Estetica, will be presented in the Special Exhibitions Gallery.

The 13TH BIENNIAL INTERNATIONAL WATER COLOR show will open on March 14 and continue through May 13.

The large 1944 EXHIBITION OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA will open on October 27 and remain current through November 19. In connection with this exhibition, the Museum has scheduled two smaller photographic shows MODERN DUTCH ARCHITECTURE, November 3 - December 10, and RECENT PHOTOGRAPHIC ACCESSIONS, October 20 - December 3.

MODERN DUTCH PRINTS will be shown in the small print gallery on the second floor from October 20 - December 3.

A loan collection of CHINESE CERAMICS, never placed on exhibition before, will be on view from December 14 through February 4.

In addition to these exhibitions, plans are being made for a number of smaller shows which will be announced later.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1942 - 1946. 07-09/1944, 092. View Original

September 29, 1944: A picture of the oil industry at war, transcribed into the swift medium of water color by four well known painters, is on exhibition beginning today at the Brooklyn Museum.

Recently Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) asked Reginald Marsh and Adolf Dehn to visit some of their operations and to tell in terms of the brush what they saw. Two other painters -- David Fredenthal and Millard Sheets -- who had been to the war fronts as LIFE MAGAZINE artists, were asked to paint the drama of moving oil to the fronts. The show comprises 36 water colors by the four artists.

Reginald Marsh, whose draftmanship has most often been associated with Coney Island carrousels, the 14th Street maelstrom and other swirling Manhattan subjects, describes with equal verve the dizzying patterns of pipes, hose, ropes and gear aboard an oil tanker on its busy turnaround. Visiting one of the oil company’s marine terminals, Marsh found these ships to be “extraordinarily impressive, with power and beauty in every line.” He called the unsung tanker “a much greater work of art than were the early square riggers.”

Adolf Dehn visited the oil company’s great Baton Rouge refinery, and each of his pictures is a landscape showing the various towers, spheres, cylinders, and other refinery equipment under skies that mingle clear blue with the white of escaping steam and black smoke. Dehn’s sharp and often humorous observation is carried by a pungent, acrid color scheme that seems loaded with the smell of oil.

While following invading troops on a South Pacific beachhead, David Fredenthal was impressed by the importance of oil as indicated by the hectic unloading of oil drums on the heels of the first waves of invading troops. The theme of a bare-chested soldier wrestling a 450-lb. oil drum is repeated throughout each of the dramatic Fredenthal water colors, and it provides the artist with an inexhaustible and fascinating vehicle for his forceful and -- at times ferocious -- draftsmanship.

Fredenthal, who is 30 years old, was the youngest artist ever to win a Guggenheim Fellowship, six years ago, and has since then won considerable recognition from various museums throughout the country.

Millard Sheets, one of the leaders of the vigorous new group of West Coast painters who have achieved national recognition, was sent to India by LIFE where he had opportunity there to see first hand one of the most vital air freighting jobs of this war -- getting oil “over the hump” to China. The pictures he painted for Jersey Standard are drenched in rich bright colors that mingle East with West. They depict such scenes as the loading of oil drums into cargo planes, or such color contrasts as a drab tanker tying up at a dock close by a gayly painted Indian temple.

Of special interest in this loan exhibit of commissioned paintings is the fact that each of the four artists is already represented in the museum’s permanent collection.

The present show is the first exhibition of this series of industrial paintings, some of which have appeared in reproduction in the company’s publication, THE LAMP. The show, installed on the fifth floor, continues through November 12.

PRESS PREVIEW: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 10:00 A.M. - 4:30 P.M.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1942 - 1946. 07-09/1944, 094-5. View Original 1 . View Original 2