Ralston Crawford
Theatre Roof
1936
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Ralston Crawford
Theatre Roof
1936
Physical Qualities
Oil on canvas, Unframed: 32 1/8 x 40 in. (81.6 x 101.6 cm) Framed: 39 x 46 1/4 in. (99.1 x 117.5 cm)
Credit Line
W. Clagett Emory Bequest Fund, in Memory of his Parents, William H. Emory of A and Martha B. Emory; and Edward Joseph Gallagher III Memorial Fund
Object Number
1980.128
With its sharply delineated geometric forms, Theatre Roof marks Ralston Crawford as a practitioner of Precisionism. This energetic American movement of the 1920s and early 1930s adapted modernist strategies from European cubism and futurism to subjects drawn from the American industrial landscape. A contemporary of Charles Sheeler, whose image of a Manchester textile factory hangs nearby, Crawford used flat unarticulated planes of smoothly painted color to capture steel foundries, water towers, machinery, and other symbols of American industry. His precisionist pictures gained fame during the 1930s. Crawford held his first one-artist exhibition at Baltimore’s Maryland Institute of Art (now MICA) in 1934, shortly before he painted Theatre Roof.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase, 1980; Barbara Mathes Gallery, Inc., New York; A.M. Adler Fine Arts, Inc., NY, 1979 (through purchase from The Guggenheim Museum, after deaccession of 12/29/1979); The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY, 1948 (through purchase of the Karl Nierendorf Estate by Baroness Hilla Rebay); Karl Nierendorf Gallery, NY; C. Philip Boyer Galleries, NY; the artist
A. M. Sachs Gallery, NY, November 30, 1971-January 5, 1972.
The Albany Institute of History and Art, "The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Collection," January 19-July 30, 1973.
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., NY, "Buildings: Architecture in American Modernism," October 29-November 29, 1980, no. 15, ill. p.21
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, "Images of America: Precisionist Painting and Modern Photography," September 9-November 7, 1982; circulation to The Saint Louis Art Museum, BMA, Des Moines Art Center, and The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Barbara Haskell, Whitney Museum of American Art, "Ralston Crawford," October 2, 1985-February 2, 1986
BMA, "American Modernism from the Collection," June 25, 2003-
The Albany Institute of History and Art, "The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Collection," January 19-July 30, 1973.
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., NY, "Buildings: Architecture in American Modernism," October 29-November 29, 1980, no. 15, ill. p.21
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, "Images of America: Precisionist Painting and Modern Photography," September 9-November 7, 1982; circulation to The Saint Louis Art Museum, BMA, Des Moines Art Center, and The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Barbara Haskell, Whitney Museum of American Art, "Ralston Crawford," October 2, 1985-February 2, 1986
BMA, "American Modernism from the Collection," June 25, 2003-
"Town & Country", February 1939, ill. p. 66.
Karen Tsujimoto, "Images of America: Precisionist Painting and Modern Photography", 1982, p. 232.
Barbara Haskell, "Ralston Crawford", Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985, p. 39.
Inscribed: FACE: Signed, lower right, "CRAWFORD"
