Chad's Place by Samuel Thal

This is a drypoint etching titled Chad's Place by American artist Sam Thal. It was created in the late 1940s for the Associated American Artists. The image is dominated by a massive tree trunk the branches of which frame a house and barn in the middle distance. The tree is dead and the barn, house, and fences all appear to be the worse for wear. The artist's mastery of the drypoint technique is evident in the deep shadows of the tree branches, the brush to the lower left of the image, the barn roof, and fence. It's a very dramatic image. The plate is 12 x 9 inches. It is well-struck and inked. It is signed Sam Thal in pencil lower right. It is unframed and the sheet is untrimmed 16 x 13 inches. It is in excellent condition with no fading, toning, staining, foxing, tears, or paper loss. A wonderful work by this master etcher.

Samuel Thal (1903-1964) Sam Thal was born in New York City. He pursued artistic training from an early and studied at several of New York’s most prestigious institutions including the National Academy of Design, the Art Students League and the Beaux Arts Academy. His family subsequently moved to Boston and he continued his studies at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He spent his entire working life in Boston becoming associated with the Boston Architectural Club and teaching at Garland Junior College, the Boston Architectural Club, and the Boston Museum of Modern Art. He was part of the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. He not only produced artwork but was active in creating educational programs for the Project. After the war he published work with the Associated American Artists. While he worked in different media, he is best known as an etcher. Some of his etchings won awards from the Society of American Etchers most notable the prestigious Talcott Prize in 1942. One interesting aspect of his artistic work is his fondness for using individual buildings and houses as his subjects. He titled these works after the owners such as Chad’s Place, Jerome’s House, etc. Many of these works were from Cape Anne. His work is held in many collections including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress (Thal won several purchase awards from the LoC), the Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), the Madison (Wisconsin) Museum of Contemporary Art, the Boston Public Library, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. His papers are held by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.