Coal Elevators
- Date
- 1938
- Material
- Oil on canvas
- depicts
- Exton, Pennsylvania, United States, North and Central America
- Classification
- Paintings
- Collection
- American Art
- Current Location
- On View, Gallery 334
- Dimensions
- 36 1/4 × 50 1/4 in. (92.1 × 127.6 cm)
framed: 38 7/16 × 52 3/8 × 2 in. (97.6 × 133 × 5.1 cm) - Credit Line
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard T. Fisher
- Rights
- © 2020 Estate of Ralston Crawford / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
- Object Number
- 92:1976
NOTES
The smooth geometric forms, cool palette, and industrial subject are characteristic of “precisionist” paintings. These paintings were made during the 1920s and 1930s when the nation’s technological and industrial might was celebrated. The repetition of gray silos across the bulk of the painting seems adamantly impersonal. Ralston Crawford explained that, “I have painted many pictures which utilize something I can call a ‘blank center’…Coal Elevators is probably close to one of the best in this category.”
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