VAM galleries including this work:
The Owensboro Museum of Fine Art | Everyday Life || VAM Home

Paul Sample’s work reflects the pathos of the times from the Great Depression through World War II as well as the prosperity of the 1950s in both rural and urban environments. Sample was both a regionalist in the tradition of Thomas Hart Benton and an urban realist, much in the style of the Ash Can School, with its philosophy that what was true and real in life was beautiful and therefore constituted art. He also is associated with American scene painting, social realism, and the reportorial style. All three are closely related to the regionalist movement and share a primary objective of portraying American people from all classes and walks of life—in wealth and poverty, triumph and tragedy.

About the Artist

Paul Starrett Sample was born in Louisville in 1896. He served in the Navy in World War I and then attended Dartmouth College, where he was an intercollegiate boxing champion. After graduating in 1921 with an M.F.A. degree, he spent four years in the Adirondacks recuperating from tuberculosis and pursuing his interest in art. He studied art formally in Los Angeles, then worked as a commercial artist and illustrator, participated in the Works Project Administration public art project, and was an overseas war correspondent/illustrator for Life magazine. After a 24-year tenure as artist-in-residence at Dartmouth, he retired from academic life, but continued to paint until his death in 1974.

Sample’s work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, and New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Academy of Design.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion: Americans in a Parisian Bar is a work of narrative art, as it tells a story. What story does it tell you? Discuss the characters and interaction shown in the scene. What do you think of the Ash Can School philosophy of “art for life’s sake”?

Activity: Create a painting that portrays a scene from your life.

Links

See examples of Sample’s work at ArtFact.com.
[www.artfact.com/features/viewArtist.cfm?aID=9154]

Learn about the Ash Can School of art at the Virtual Museum of Art.
[www.virtualology.com/virtualmuseumofart/hallofartmovements/ashcanschool.net]

Read about and see images of works by Thomas Hart Benton at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
[monet.unk.edu/mona/contemp/benton/benton.html]